


Vague Beginnings

by jojotier



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drabble Collection, Multi, assorted aus, of a sorts anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 11:17:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 45
Words: 43,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19440355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jojotier/pseuds/jojotier
Summary: So with Cherubplay tanking, my will to rp finally leaving me and a 4-year strong nostalgia taking root, I decided to post all the rp starters I wrote over my course on the site! Included is the gradual progression of my writing (since these date back to 2015), as well as little notes as to what each prompt has inspired me to write fic wise, years later.I hope you enjoy, haha





	1. Industrial Revolution Witch Jade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2015

'Six days to create the world, and one day of rest', she had heard repeated over and over by a few friends she had in the city, along with the ever-present 'god dammit Harley do you ever take any breaks?' to which she usually replied with nothing more than a grin as she picked up the box of whatever metal or groceries was on the list that day. Of course, Jade did occasionally take a rest, but those days were far and few in between. After all, there was always something to do, something to invent and plan and make! She just didn't have the time, between all the tinkering and spell casting that needed to be accomplished! She had been told multiple times that it was strange that a lady like herself would be living all alone out in the forest, even if it was to do this ever so important work of tinkering, but she couldn't help it. She was just unable to keep still while the world started to advance around her.

Besides that, she really couldn't afford to keep still, with the way the world was advancing. Those factories had been springing up for a few years now, and she lived on the outskirts of one of the towns that had sprung up around it, and with towns and people came old wives' tales and religious preaching. The Methodists were gaining power, she thought- that was both a good and bad thing for her, because while a lot of the zealous in town didn't really bat an eye at her, others gave her quite nasty looks, and seemed to be wanting to lecture her left and right about 'men's work' and how it'd be devilish if she continued. If any of them were to find out her little secret? Then it would be over- she'd be burned for sure.

That was how Jade sort of grew into her reputation, she thought. People saw her as the town's eccentric, the granddaughter of a wealthy man who after his death resigned herself to spinsterhood and decided to live out in the woods. That wasn't /exactly/ true, of course- she just sort of let them think that, because if anyone were to think that she was on the market, then there was going to be some suitor or another, and then he'd try to court her and restrict her and she would have to watch her every move to make sure she didn't accidentally give anything away and cause things to get out of hand in her life. Besides, if she were to go, then who would have the healing magic to make sure the forest remained?

These woods protected and shielded her from that life, and in return she made sure they stayed healthy and full of fruit trees. This was the only place she could practice her magic in peace and quiet, and where she could tinker without the annoyance of surprised people hounding her. She couldn't just let that be thrown out the window. In fact, she had found some time to herself, for once, and was using it to take a little stroll through the forest that she adored so much. She had finished experimenting with the water frame that had recently gained so much popularity, and thought that maybe she could replicate the parts needed to make each one, so that parts could be interchanged and repairs could be made easy. She had her potions neatly labeled and hidden away from view. It was about time for Jade to take a little moment and relax. It was during this little leisure moment when she was strolling through the woods, a pair of dueling pistols in their holsters hanging on her belt and a basket hanging at her elbow for some fruit, when she heard the sound of someone approaching. In a flash her hands went to her pistols, muscles going taut as she looked to where the source of the sound was coming from. Not many people came this far into the woods, much less a lot of the people from the town. So the question was, who was there? Or rather, /what/ was there? Though she knew that it could be a simple traveler, no one to fear, she wanted to be sure.

Holding onto the weapon, she called out, "Hello? Who's there? Whoever or whatever you are, I would like you to show yourself!"

**Never did get far with this one, but I'm keeping the idea in my back pocket as an rpgmaker game concept- I have the rpgmaker software!! It's just a matter of making the game...**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: some dude took this prompt in 2016 just to rant at me about how it was "feminist propaganda"??? I was like, 16 at the time. Wild. Wild Times


	2. Steampunk Wingsmith Karkat (and his no good very bad day)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2015.

Karkat was not having a good fucking day. Never mind the fact that life had decided to shove seven rusty machetes down his throat in the form of a small cold that make it nearly impossible to speak at the full volume that he was used to speaking in, but his mother needed some medicine and he wasn't going to be getting paid until that last shipment of copper parts was received by the company that needed them, meaning that he was short on funds and in no mood whatsoever to deal with whatever demons decided to call up over the line and order him around.

Not only that, but he was also apparently getting another angel assigned to him later on. That was just fucking lovely, wasn't it? Even if he was the same species as them, technically, that really did nothing to help the little problem he had with respecting the assholes. All of them, without fail, seemed to have their heads planted firmly so far up their assholes that they could probably see their colons at all hours of the day, and the sick fucks probably took especial pleasure in watching their own digestive systems work, since that entire narrative of angels being the holiest fucking things to ever grace the surface of the world was still around and there were people stupid enough to believe it. There would always be stupid people, granted, but in any case.

Then again, the way Karkat figured it, there was an upside to them being so damn conceited. Most of the angels who ended up coming to him, which were few in and of themselves, didn't even seem interested in what he had to say, not even pausing to pay attention to any signs that he, too, was an angel. In that way, his identity was safe. He could continue doing what he wanted and continue with his freedom just so long as he continued to pretend to be a human, and really, that wasn't too hard for him to do in the first place.

After all, he had two human 'parents' who adopted him, was registered as a human despite anything. He had a comfortable, if a bit fucking draining, job down there in the tunnels, having studied and then worked his way up to the "prestigious" rank of wingsmith. And, he didn't have those slits cut into his back, so even if his back was bared, unlike most angels he wouldn't be found out from that alone. Besides, that entire practice seemed not only frivolous as shit, but uncomfortable too. Who wanted copper wings sticking out of their flesh for most of the day, whirring with gears and whatever decoration that they wanted, all the gold and trimmings that showed wealth or luck or whatever else? It seemed painful as fuck, and all in all, not worth it in the least.

Right then, though, Karkat really didn't have the time to be thinking about that shit. Right then, he was in his workshop, as cramped and cluttered as it might have been. Working conditions there in the underground tunnels where most of the smithing got done wasn't ideal, but after years of work, Karkat had just learned to live with it. Sometimes, someone just had to deal with and live with shit, no matter how stupid it was. Now that he'd gotten that major order done, he could sit back in his chair, wiping the oil and sweat and metal dust from himself as he got a small tool and a project that he'd been working on, a little metal bird.

The way he figured it, rich people always liked little distractions like this, whether they were human, demon, or angel, so why not try to make a profit off of it? He just needed to find a way to get a heat source into the small clockwork bird so that the water could turn into steam and come out of the tin beak as bird song. It was all very delicate work, since he had to be extremely careful not to knock one of the small pieces out of place, but if he got this right then this may just be his way to /something/ better than this cramped little space. The mechanic paused, though, turning around as the intercom buzzed, telling him that someone had come to see him. Well hell, he would have to put that project aside for now, wouldn't he?

**There's actually a great deal of worldbuilding that's gone into this one over various rps, including alternate history being written, stabdads, and speakeasies and political and social intrigue. I'll likely turn this into a fic, but I may use the ideas inside of it for an original sci-fi novel as well.**


	3. Aradia's Home for Wayward Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016.

"Hold on Mrs. Andorra- Just a moment!"

Oh no, just what was that frisky old woman getting up to this time?

Aradia had heard the call in the middle of the night, which in itself was annoying because she thought she had an agreement with the others that there was to be no howling at one in the morning, but here she was, rushing down the stairs in only her nightgown, hair in disarray and hanging low over her eyes as she tried to get to the source of the noise. Now, don't get her wrong- Aradia thought that Mrs. Andorra was a very sweet visceral mass of black writhing nothingness, but when something was wrong, she just had the little habit of shrieking to high heaven. Even when something wasn't wrong, she'd do the same, and while Aradia was normally very tolerant of all manner of strange noises from the spirits who lived in the apartment building she too called home, it grew to be a nuisance when most in the building and in the area surrounding it were sleeping.

Thankfully, the ghost stopped just as soon as Aradia had made it to her floor, which also thankfully enough was the floor right beneath where Aradia normally slept. Luckily for Mrs. Andorra- not so much for Ms. Megido. The girl took a moment to pause outside of the spirit's little apartment- the woman inside didn't like for her guests to be looking too disheveled when they entered her home, though Aradia had no idea how she was supposed to tame the mass of knotted black curls quick enough to meet the lady of the house's standards. Eventually, after a few minutes of combing through it with her fingers, she gave up, adjusted her white nightgown so that she didn't look too bad, and knocked on the door. Best be polite, after all.

The door was thrown open and a misty black tendril wrapped around Aradia's middle, tugging her inside the apartment. The girl stumbled a little, but ultimately regained her footing, looking at the mass of black fog that stood in the room, vaguely humanoid in shape. So today Mrs. Andorra had chosen a little more of a compact form to receive Aradia's visit in- that was odd, especially since the specter seemed to like spreading herself out and taking room, being as abstract as possible, but Aradia supposed that a mist's choice of shape was none of her business. The sleepy young woman asked, "What's the matter, Mrs. A?"

"Ms. Megido, darling Ms. Megido, it's a wonder that you're here at such a late hour!" whispered nothing, voices soft and everywhere, "Your hair's a mess, darling- but no matter, no matter, no matter- you simply must help! There- there, in the corner, there's a monstrous little creature, a horrid little... thing!"

Oh, dear. Had another spirit wandered inside the poor ghost's room? That wouldn't have been the first time- many spirits were confused and disoriented when they first came here. "Show me where it is." Aradia told the ghost, watching as the blackened spot in the air moved to a corner of the room, reaching one tendril out and pointing. As it turned out, the 'horrid little creature' that had poor Mrs. Andorra screaming bloody murder was just a spider. Thankfully, it wasn't a poisonous one. Worryingly, though, this was the third time this week that the poor spirit had forgotten something that she had known as a human. Aradia would have to really work with her, to help her overcome this strange amnesia that seemed to be taking hold of her as of late.

Not now though. Now was the time to sleep. Now, especially, was the time to gently wave the spider into a cup (normally left right outside in case the spirit down the hall needed it) and bid the ghost good night, leaving behind the mass of mist as it expanded out, stretching herself comfortably in her home. Aradia went downstairs and took the spider to the front door, letting it out. After all, the little thing deserved to live, just as much as everyone else did. With that task done and the screaming subsided for the night, Aradia prepared to close the front door and trek back to her nice, inviting bed. Then, though, she heard a sound.

She wasn't sure whether it came from outside or inside the building- most days she could never be sure what sounds came from where, since her neighbor two doors down happened to have quite a few odd sounds coming from their room- but she was definitely determined to see whether or not someone had come here. Turning a bit and glancing out into the darkness, she called, "Hello? Is anyone there?"

**Currently, the idea of this modern magic au ghost boarding house is being adapted into a standalone novel with original characters, eldritch monstrosities, and lesbians.**


	4. Karkat: Be a Soulless Bastard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally written in 2016- got rewritten in 2018. This is the 2016 version.

Karkat was, quite honestly, probably being bored to death by this stupid fucking party. Okay, so it wasn’t as if he didn’t talk to the people, or hated anyone there too much; he was just sick to death of high society parties with their overcompensating assholes and court politics. He never did understand how some people could find pleasure in playing politics, backstabbing one another and spreading gossip around like demented assholes. Then again, though, Karkat was a person of peculiar interests, and wasn’t quite into the entire idea of politics. He did, however, like to go to eat all the delicious food that was brought to the balls, though more often than not he found himself wandering away from the party and either going to see what the family mechanics were up to or going into the library to see just what interesting thing could be read there. In fact, that was where he found himself going at this very moment, scouting out a nice library to seek refuge in from the many voices of women and the many suitors asking them to dance.

He was for now wandering the shelves, marveling at the impressive amount of books and running a gloved hand along the spines. His hands were always gloved at these events, mostly because it would be extremely rude to just go to shake hands with a werewolf or vampire only to have them complain of his soulless touch taking away their fangs or their claws. Vampires especially got annoyed with the touch, because it seemed that as a whole, vampires were just very proud of their feeding fangs, and the Queens of the vampire hives were especially fond of the second pair of fangs they used to turn humans into vampires. Of course, he couldn’t blame a Queen for being proud of that; it was a great honor for a human to be a vampire, and if they survived, then that person was proven to have been chosen correctly. After all, not just any human could become a vampire or werewolf; they had to have an excess of the soul, otherwise they would be dead in the attempt. But of course, it wasn’t as if he cared too much about it; it wasn’t as if he could ever be turned.

It even reminded him of how, once, a werewolf alpha had not only mistaken him for someone with a soul, but for someone who had excess of it. Karkat had to explain to her that he most certainly wouldn’t survive the change, considering the fact that he had no soul to actually transform. Then again, being a werewolf is something not too terribly high on his list; the creatures were fast and powerful, and could change into wolves whenever they wished, but come full moon time and they had to be chained up in their basements to keep from ravaging the city like animals. Then there was the fact that the vampires often held full moon parties as a big ‘fuck you’ to them, which was honestly so petty that it was almost hilarious. Of course, the tension that had slowly been growing between the two races was no laughing matter, and it may begin to hurt humans like himself, soulless or no. For now though, Karkat decided to push away such ideas and focus on the ongoing now.

Then there was a figure on the edge of his vision, and Karkat could see that it was a vampire. This one had his fangs out, and considering that he was the only one in the library, he would have to guess that this one was looking to make him his prey. Well, he would have liked to see this asshole try. So he took his gloves off, putting them on the shelf beside him before turning to him, raising an eyebrow. “Okay, what the fuck do you want?” He was quick, Karkat would give him that, and grabbed both of his hands as he leaned over and tried to sink his fangs into the soulless man’s neck. Well, he would have succeeded, if they weren’t so spectacularly missing. The vampire was confused, trying to find with his tongue where his fangs had gone to, and Karkat took his chance to ball his hands up into fists and break free, punching the man in the stomach. He was winded, and confused beyond belief, and Karkat had to wonder what kind of stupid as hell hive didn’t tell their vampires about the existence of soulless persons, or wouldn’t give them the list of names of those soulless who lived in this city that they would never be able to feed from. The vampire tried to get close to Karkat again, trying to give a sweet smile to get close, but by this time, he was quite done with that. So Karkat went over to the fireplace, and grabbed an iron poker. It wasn’t hot, so it would do. Then he knocked the vampire over the head before he could try to attack again, leaving him on the floor, unconscious.

That’s when he heard footsteps, and here Karkat was, standing over an unconscious vampire, weapon in hand. Well. This was something that he was going to have trouble explaining away. Shit.

**Considering the fact that this was based on Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate, I'm likely not doing anything with this. However, working with this prompt did later influence the worldbuilding of the steampunk angels and demons prompt, so it's a win all around, haha**


	5. The Nymph Called Kanaya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016, but retired.

She had observed. It was in her nature to do so, to watch all that happened around her and observe the humans and monsters in their lives.

She had been observing since the forests first grew up from the soil, blocking the sunlight with their gnarled branches and reaching up with leaves that held foliages of many colors, sometimes with the oddest little flowers. She had observed passively, at first morbidly curious, then repulsed by what she had seen. It wasn’t often that she made her way up into the very top branches of trees anymore, not since those many awful years when blood was shed for the sake of land.

She had the misfortune of seeing the worst side of humanity one could see; war. Those in the forest with her, those ancient beasts who relished in the darkness and whispered sweet words, assured her that it would soon pass, that wars did not last and that humans did have some good qualities. She had come to being with this forest, and her earliest years were of watching the blood run thick on the soil, observing anger in its most potent forms. She knew firsthand what the war did, and she could only shudder at the memory of what happened to the soldiers if one side were to lose a battle, becoming consumed by their hopelessness.

Bodies were strewn about the forest floor and beasts feasted on the festering carcasses. Humans swayed above in the trees hung by nooses, some branches bowing low to the ground under the weight of corpses strung up side by side, as if they were all the fruits of a particularly fertile tree. She had come to hate the color red in those years, and she could only be relieved when the war was finally over. The lands were split between the two kingdoms, and she had the astute pleasure of watching each kingdom do what they could do with their claims. The cheerful Prospitians danced with their cares thrown to the gentle winds that caressed the loving, fertile soil of their lands. They sang with voices as golden and lilting as the sweet little songbirds that flew about, begging for little crumbs and nesting with their little ones in the trees.

As beautiful as Prospit was, as seemingly golden and perfect, it was not something that caught her fancy. While it had been lovely to observe from her perch at the edge of the trees, lovely to hear the songs of peace and love when before it had only been songs of the army and the cries of battle, her fancy was caught with Derse, the kingdom that had been exiled to the darkness. It was the kingdom of the clever.

She observed the cleverness that Derse displayed, the wit that they had. They may not have been in the light and may not have won the war, but they knew just of what to make of their prize. The beasts who lived in the forest, who so loved the shelter and the sweet fruit of plants and poison, stayed, and in exchange the Dersites picked the plump fruits that grew on the trees. These were the fruits that she and other spirits helped to grow. Sometimes, if she was very lucky, those fruit pickers caught sight of her and gave her small gifts, thanking the strange woman of the forest with the vines that curled around her dark arms and who helped them survive. A few even stayed and asked about the special glowing flowers that grew on her arms, white as stars against the night sky.

It was peaceful, no matter what tension may have been brewing between Prospit and Derse. It was a sweet time when she could roam the forest and find no hostility. The orchard workers even had taken to calling her Kanaya, some olden word meaning ‘prosperity’. She liked the name, and soon it had just… stuck with her. It was a gift from them, and she kept it. As it always is, though, not all good things could last, and Kanaya saw that there was no exception to this.

Soon, a grim blackness grew over golden Prospit. Their carelessness had begun to cost them, and the King, in all his ‘wisdom’, refused to act as a King ought to. A wise ruler would have tried his best to do what was right for his people, and would make it known that they were beginning to come upon hard times so that the necessary precautions could be made to allow all the Prospitians to live as comfortably as they could. It seemed, though, that power had crept to his head and inflated his ego beyond what was healthy, and he was too absorbed in his extravagant lifestyle. The Prospitians danced on, unaware that they were beginning to dance upon their own graves, unaware that the songs that they were singing may as well have been the dirges wailed at a funeral. There was joy, bliss in ignorance.

Then Kanaya had seen it. She had dared to climb up into the trees one night, and had looked up at the sky that was of black velvet, dotted with those little gemstone stars that glistened and moved as if they were alive. She had been enraptured, watching the sky as intently as she had watched everything else, and then there was a scream. A man, with a band of gold on his right arm, shot one arrow, then two. She hadn’t been observing the right thing that night, and that had regretfully cost Derse two rulers who had done nothing other than care for their kingdom with their lives. She hadn’t been up above since then.

Two little heiresses had taken the throne. Then, there had been one.

She was so young, too, a tiny thing that had been so innocent. One day her big sister went into the deep, black forest, had gone into the darkened wood, and never returned. Kanaya didn’t have to worry about going up and looking from the canopies of the trees; they grew far too high for her to ever be able to scale, and she was bound to the ground, ever observing all that happened. The pact was made, and ever more fruitful did the fruits grow. They were supposed to grow so beautifully only for those lovely Dersites, those humbled people who told the truth. They were never meant for the tarnished gold of Prospitian hands, and yet they were being taken by them. Kanaya could do nothing more than observe as the tarnish washed off on the roots of the trees, staining them and making them just as sick as Prospit was.

Kanaya knew, now, that she could no longer sit back and observe. She could no longer sit back and pray like a child for this to be resolved with diplomacy, not when the Prospitians were slowly rumbling about the need for blood of the Dersites. This was why she prepared to leave her forest home for the first time in centuries, for the first time in her life. If she wanted to continue on living, and to protect those Dersites who had been so kind to her, she had to leave and seek out the best way to save them.

She prepared to leave. With her few belongings in a small bag tied to her waist and a dagger in hand, she decided that now was as good a time to go as any. The spirit didn’t want to lose her nerve. Then, there was a sound. She stopped dead in her tracks, her hand gripping the hilt of the blade as she heard footsteps. There was someone coming from nearby, and it wasn’t often that humans came this deep into the forest, in this place where she had hidden her most prized fruits.

The nymph turned then, clutching her dagger tightly in hand and internally wincing, because while she didn’t like killing she knew that it might very well be necessary. She called out, voice carrying through the near constant whispers of the hidden creatures in the dark and through the dim light that the flowers on her arms provided. “Who is it? Who has come to my grove?”

**I ended up retiring this prompt back in 2016 after a partner intimidated me by asking a lot of extremely necessary worldbuilding questions and me, being 16 and not very good at worldbuilding, didn't know any answers to their questions. I really do like what I have here though, so I may use it for a fantasy fic sometime in the future!**


	6. Jade and the Trickster Apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally written in 2016- was later rewritten about 4 months ago now.

It had been months since the first outbreak. It was never supposed to be this way.

Six months ago, Dr. Harley had worked with a team of scientists (and his granddaughter, though that one was a secret from the public) to produce a new antidepressant. When they had originally made and tested it, it seemed that humans weren’t just helped to function normally with minimal doses; they were made happy. He and his team had been delighted to find this out, absolutely amazed at what they were doing. They were making history, by creating the first cure for a mental illness, a cure for one of the many diseases that tormented the human mind and was born from it in the same breath. It was supposed to be a good thing, a medical marvel. A miracle.

When it had been made, no one thought it would come to this.

Jade had helped her grandfather with the medicine in those final stages, had watched it develop into something life changing. She had been such a fool. How could she not have seen the signs? How could she not have seen the way that the antidepressant (which was in itself based off of a certain culture of bacteria that grew in the drugs that many indigenous peoples often smoked to get in touch with the 'spirit world’) had started to split apart and multiply with the plethora of new environments and genes that it was exposed to? What had been a harmless, albeit hallucinogenic, bacteria that would simply make someone high adapted, evolved beyond the scope of what she had seen before. It had mutated and bred, until all the subjects began exhibiting signs.

At first, the strain took two weeks to complete it’s job, which was to completely rewrite the host’s brain activity, rewiring them to become something else entirely. They soon grew cravings for sweets (caused by an unusually high metabolism and the sudden lack of need for certain minerals) and began to exhibit odd changes. Brain activity would increase in many of these subjects, so much so in some cases that it seemed that every single sense and nerve ending was being used, with all areas of the brain lighting up and showing activity (that shouldn’t have been possible, because even if humans used more than 10%, they used less than 85% at any given time).

Then, they started to die. One by one, patients treated with the drug would seize horribly, and then inevitably all of their vital signs would fail. Jade hadn’t been in the lab when the first one had passed, but she read the reports of the death. Her grandfather started insisting most days that she shouldn’t come into the lab, shouldn’t follow after him, but she came anyway. It was on that day when Jade was delivering some papers to another scientist when the one who was supposed to be dead burst through a door somewhere, somewhere secret, and bitten into the man’s neck. Jade had run back to her grandfather, unsure of what to do, without any weapons to be had. That’s when her grandfather set the lab ablaze.

She remembered that day clearly. She had cried out as she watched the lab begin to catch in fire, and her grandfather had slapped a hand on her mouth, telling her to be quiet. By then, there were other scientists, either screaming and moaning in pain or laughing maniacally, candy sweet as anything. That’s when her grandfather took up his hunting rifle (why he had that, she still hadn’t the faintest idea) and started to shoot at all of them. The bullets barely seemed to phase them, and by then it seemed that the virus, as the bacteria had now evolved into, had made them into something stronger than a human. It took eight bullets before one fell to the ground, foaming at the mouth and most decisively dead. She had been appalled, aghast at the awful atrocity that had been committed, but there was no time.

He took her away, and gave her the rifle she now wore on her back. He entrusted her with a suitcase filled with samples of virus, from the earliest stages when it was still a happy, harmless drug and to the newer stages, which were still adapting and mutating as fast as one may blink. She was told to run, to shoot those infected so it wouldn’t spread and mutate into something more dangerous, and most of all, to continue his work.

That’s when Jade discovered, to her horror, that the few weeks of euphoria that these flesh eating creatures experienced before death was contagious. Her grandfather had started to laugh, face splitting apart in such a horrible grin, and she was chased off by a multicolored monstrosity that had replaced her grandfather, just asking, begging to give his little granddaughter a kiss on the cheek. By now, Jade had dubbed this initial, contagious stage the 'trickster’ step. Once they died, there was no going back for them.

Six months later, countless bullet riddled torsos and many failed attempts at a cure for the virus, she thought that perhaps, perhaps now she had it.

She had to run away from the city that she formerly called home, but now she was in a new one, one where the disease, while spreading, wasn’t as abundant as the last. Jade searched for a safe place to continue, and had accidentally killed one with the cure she had been working on. By now, though, the death hardly phased her. It was a means to an end, after all, and what was one dead infected when the cure could save thousands of these tricksters? For now, she had been looking for a suitable subject, looking for a new person to try the cure on. She had to find this next subject, and see if this tweaked version would work.

She gripped the rifle when she heard something, but she couldn’t shoot here. This was one of the more infested parts of town, still in the first stages of the virus and not quite as murderous, but dangerous all the same. If they heard the gunshots then they would come swarming her like bees. She let go of it and instead took the machete that she kept in her backpack (it wasn’t preferred, it was messy and bloody, but it was silent), gripping it and looking around herself. What was there?

**I eventually rewrote this, but it never really went anywhere in rp... I might make a fic out of it though!**


	7. Bloodbender Kurloz and the Unknown Horrors of Death (ATLA au)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Blood, character death, bloodbending
> 
> Written in 2016

He could still remember it. The beat of the war drums ringing through the air, bare hands smacking against sealskin to provide the steady beat to signal the encroaching armies. There were two of them at that battle, though there were many more clans besides, miles away and either fighting their own battles or waiting to freeze. No other tribe mattered though, not one other but the tribe before them, dressed in the blue of the sea, and his own tribe, the ones who painted their faces as skulls. The tan, bare faces gleamed in the cruelly mocking white sunlight, and their own dark faces had been painted white with paint. There was nothing but the heartbeat of each man as they marched across the ice for a moment, nothing but the harried breaths and the small click of bone and wood that followed after. This was their battlefield, but it was the moments after that Kurloz still remembered the most of.

When the battle began, there were people being impaled by ice spikes coming from the ground, blood running bright on the snowy ground as others still were encased in tombs of snow to freeze. Kurloz watched as their best waterbenders were killed by the very element they controlled, the very force of nature that they loved and cherished, that was a part of their very being. It was gruesome, and he would have looked away had he been a weaker man, had he mourned those inglorious bastards who attacked them. Instead, he sat, hidden away from the enemy’s view, seething silently, ever mute, as his brothers died. He was not to come out yet. He was only to come out when they were absolutely certain. Finally, he was told to come out. It was his time, and he had waited, fucking stood by despite how much he wanted to disobey and help them, but that didn’t matter. It was his time. He walked out onto the field, and that is when the secret weapon of the tribe clothed in violet came to light. He could feel it, the water that rushed through men’s veins, the blood that flowed. The blood that could be frozen with the greatest of ease. The blood that could be used to kill. Blood gave life, and Kurloz used it to take it away too. He twisted his hands, reveling in the patterns that appeared on skin, grinning wildly as agonized screams from the enemy rang out. Looking back at it now, perhaps that was the moment he really snapped. The first loss of humanity.

But Kurloz had miscalculated. he had let one slip through his net, escape his notice, and the next thing he knew, the spear had pierced his heart. No amount of blood bending could mend a man bleeding to death. That battlefield was where the last bloodbender of his tribe had died, and then, when he had awoken, he was staring up through water. It was odd to think of it, when he first realized. He was dead. He had died in battle as his tribe’s last hope, had failed them miserably. Even so, he still liked to believe that they missed him, that they remembered him fondly. He still liked to think that perhaps, he was wept over, lying on that field.

(He wasn’t. They had said so. Those spirits he called the horrorterrors never lied.)

He had spent centuries peering out through that pond. He spent centuries watching the enemy build up a city around where he was, spent all that time watching the rest of the tribes assimilate. Again he was forced to sit and wait, seething to himself and listening to those spirits who passed. He found that they often did not lie, though they spoke in confusing ways. He listened to them, and little by little, he heard more about the outside world. It was a cold and bitter place. The fire nation ran rampant, now, and the Northern Water Tribe was useless against them. As far as Kurloz was concerned, the best parts of humanity had died when the last of his tribe was killed. Then, one day, as he returned from a little expedition of a small place in the spirit realm, when he peered out he saw chaos. Someone had cried, “Bloodbender!”, as if it were the purest form of evil in this shit world.

Kurloz smiled. Perhaps his tribe wasn’t so dead after all.

Perhaps They had been right when they said there was a way for him to come back.

He had moved his way out of the koi pond, moving towards the ocean where any smart one would fee. He was going to find out who this little fucker was and put the gears of everything in motion, so that he would be able to take the astute pleasure of wiping out the tribe that had killed him before the fire nation even got the motherfucking chance. This was his holy mission now, the one passed down to him from those olden messiahs who spoke in garbled tones under the water. He would see this to the end.

Just see if he motherfucking wouldn’t.

**I retired this one about 2017 when I realized I didn't actually like rping dancestors, and when I realized I much more enjoyed the idea of ATLA au beta kids all being 4 simultaneous Avatars- literal platonic soul mates sent to save the world- instead. I don't think I'll ever use this one, to be honest.**


	8. Obligatory Fem! Eridan prompt (written out of spite)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016, and never actually used for an rp.

Fem! Eridan here with a kingdomstuck! Reposting for variety! uwu

The basic idea here is that Eridan is going to put herself into a position of power and then live out her lifelong dream of killing the entirety of the aristocracy and putting her family in power! How she does this is explained in prompt, though of course before the prompt gets off to it’s start I’ll tag triggers!

She’ll be coming to your character to try and recruit them for her cause, or at the very least keep them safe, hehe :3 Would like any Karkats, Feferis, Nepetas, Jades, and Solluxs, but will take any canon character! Genderbend is great! Will love you forever if you take this prompt, thank you for reading this silly little OOC <33333

Triggers: Death, murder, blood mention. It’s not gory or detailed, but just in case! Now, onto the prompt!!!!//

Eridan had been dragged into this marriage kicking and screaming, and there was no way in bloody fucking hell that she would leave it without a blaze of glory to follow her.

It was the perfect time to put her plan into action- a dark winter’s evening, fire casting long shadows along the walls of the spacious rooms that she knew better than the back of her own hand, rooms that she had come to despise along with everything else in her present situation. These were the rooms that she had spent long hours in, avoiding her husband as best she could while also trying to take on the countenance of a woman accepting her fate, a young girl becoming ill at mind and thinking nothing of the pretty ropes of pearls and diamonds that acted as her shackles. She pretended to be tamed, pretended to be an exotic pet domesticated by the hands of the master, and now was her time to bare her claws and show him that she was still as wild a tigress as she had been when her father married her off to this old militant pig.

Eridan would have preferred to use a gun, of sorts- a rifle, the weight of metal in her hands as the ball left the barrel, or a small dueling pistol from the man’s personal safe, for a bout of delicious irony. Unfortunately, she knew that there were guests in the house, and while she was sure that she would be able to convince them better in person, if either one heard a gunshot then they would be alerted to the crime, and she couldn’t have that. Eridan didn’t want any chance at all for them to have the time to run to the guards, because then that would jeopardize everything, and she didn’t want to pretend to be a faint damsel in distress anymore. Everyone would see how much of a killer she truly was.

She crept along through the hallway, a slow exhale of breath leaving her lips as she gripped the handle of the knife in her hand. Eridan was not feeling any fear, not then- she had planned for this moment, had calculated the details behind his back during the year where she pretended to become infatuated with him and wanted to be resigned to spending her life idling away, bearing his stinking litter of children. No more. The lady of the house had a plan, one that she was going to put into action that the man would have been proud of, if he hadn’t been one of those awful bastards like the ones that littered the streets, the filth that she was working towards systematically eliminating like the damned vermin they absolutely were. All she would need was to secure for herself a small group, one that would be pleased to listen to her, and then from there she could secure an army. Then, there would be revolution.

And when Eridan planted herself as Queen, oh, then she could truly carry out her dream.

The deed was done in an instant- the slob lay asleep in his chair in front of the great fire, a book in his lap, and she brought the knife to slice his throat, quick and simple. There were droplets of blood flowing, staining her hand and a bit of her sleeve, and she pulled away, looking for a moment. Really, she should have done this a year ago. Finally gaining the upper hand and getting what she wanted was gratifying, satisfying in a way that only made her want more. After all, she deserved this. Eridan deserved the freedom that came with never having a horrid creature like this breathing down the back of her neck again.

There were only two guests staying, and only one servant, since the rest had been ordered to go out to a nearby festival for the evening. Eridan had a simple plan- convince at least one, if not both, of the guests who had been “friends” with her former husband to join her on her mission. Whichever one didn’t agree, she would have to kill them, or at the very least imprison them somewhere else and make sure they weren’t capable of talking about the events of that night. The servant would easily be blamed for the murder. After all, it wasn’t as if Eridan had taken one of the ornate daggers or ceremonial general’s sword that the former head of the house had owned (though she sorely wished that she had, if only for the irony)- what she had murdered him with was a kitchen knife, which could always be replaced down in the kitchen.

Eridan made no move to clean the blood from her hands- after all, they were going to find out anyway, so what the hell was the point? It would have been stupid, and even then the blood served as a reminder to her that what had passed was real. She’d killed him. Away Eridan walked down the halls, a little red staining the white silk sleeve of her nightgown, and she stopped in front of the door to the guest’s bedchambers, knocking on it and putting on her most pleasant facade. While there was no way in hell that she was going to keep pretending to be a sweet, innocent thing to be viewed as weak, it may just serve as a useful bargaining chip, putting her guests at ease and making them more likely not to fucking run at the sight of her and her knife.

“Excuse me, Sir? Madam? I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you at such a late hour, but I’ve something to confess.”

**I never actually rped with this one- at the time, the site was overrun with fem!Eridans presented in super ooc, overly girly manner, and I, being then a young strapping girl who didn't realize he was actually a young strapping man and wouldn't for some 3 years, got angry about it. I would just post this one and, if anyone connected, disconnected immediately. Yeah, I was a pretty bad kid, haha**


	9. Selkie Dave: Accidentally Reveal your entire Species

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

Goddamn was he hungry. Not because he was starving or anything like that- Bro had just forgotten to go to the grocery store, is all, and even if he did he never told Dave any of that shit- but because hunting was easier than getting money for the store, and he could find some sweet shit out here in the light. It would be a pain in the ass to go hunting at night and then have to pass through the city streets as a full human, only to maybe accidentally have his seal skin slip out into the open by some criminal mastermind and expose his entire race. You know, just the standard worries. Dave was obviously just being practical here. No paranoia at all. He was too down to earth to get scared.

Of course, there were always the little treasures that washed ashore. Little pieces of coral, shells made in a certain shape, a few dead things that would totally look sweet in his collection. Dave had a little habit of hoarding shit, and besides, why shouldn't he? This section of beach that no human ever came to was his and Bro's. Anything that was dragged in by the tide was basically his, and the tide sure as hell didn't disappoint. Shit was always coming in. It was like he was living on a fucking gold mine with the theoretical physics of an investment agency- all that sweet loot was his for the taking, and even though he took a lot of shit more pearls were appearing under the surface every day. That's just interest, getting a little extra on the side, in addition to being able to catch himself a meal and keep himself from going thin.

Today was a pretty fine day for some fishing, if he did say so himself. Sun shining and trying to get through the barrier of his shades, blue skies, the anticipation of the goddamn flowers probably coming to life and starting to sing like this is some corny black and white cartoon, the whole works. He didn't have his brother there angling for a strife on the rooftop or telling him where to hunt, and that left what looked to be a human moving to the beach, dark brown tan contrasting with bleach blond hair and shades, as well as the ironically tacky beach bag he brought with him that held his sealskin, covered in blue dolphins and clashing with the teen in skinny jeans and a tank top. He had gotten some looks, but then again, that wasn't actually all that surprising. Dave was just someone people had a hard time looking away from. Sure he was just barely pushing 15 as of last December, but hey, he was young and beautiful.

Dave came to his beach, finding it mostly the same as always- as empty as a Justin Bieber concert held in a Starbucks, just the way he liked it. Humans couldn't exactly see the gnarly transformation he went through- not only was it mildly unsettling, it would sort of give away the fact that there were creatures other than the merpeople who they'd signed that treaty with some odd years ago. Hell if he knew, he really couldn't give a shit about borders or treaties. It's not as if he knew much of merpeople.

All he heard was his Bro muttering about how they were all high and mighty assholes who expected everything to be handed to them, coral reefs and shiny things and all. Dave had personally never met one, but Bro had made sure that was the case. They had been living among humans for about as long as Dave could remember, though he was at least taught to hunt for himself. That was definitely an advantage. Dave was pulling his tank top off, getting ready to take the sealskin out of his bag when he noticed something, not too far out into the water.

There was something there, on that rock. Something that looked suspiciously shiny and flashing in the sunlight beaming down on everything like a starfleet was trying to beam up the entire goddamn Earth to Scotty. Whatever that shiny shit was, it sure was interesting, and it sure as hell looked like a candidate for the patented Hoarder's Treasure Trove back in his room, so he took the sealskin from his bag and started shimmying out of his jeans and boxers. With the clothes thrown in the bag and the bag tossed behind two rocks, Dave made his way down to the water, sitting his ass down in the sand and starting to get the skin over his legs. He would get himself something to eat after getting this thing.

With his sealskin on, he dove forwards, slipping into the water. It never was painful to feel bones fusing together, but it sure as hell was weird. Hell, it wasn't as weird as seeing the skin shed and having them /unfuse/- now that was a fucking horror show in and of itself, and when his shedding had finally happened at age five, he remembered how freaked the fuck out about it he was. But where was Dave again? Oh, right, swimming towards the shiny thing on the rock and idly shrugging off the weird feeling of webbing between his fingers and the feeling of something looking at him. Probably just a seagull- those little bastards were always trying to get his shit and generally be feathery brainless assholes. It wasn't too long before Dave reached the rock with the shiny object, but he had to duck back under the water.

There was the sudden feeling that he was being watched. He took a deep breath and sank into the water, tail moving back and forth as he scanned his surroundings, spinning in a slow circle. Just who the fuck was there?

**I never did get too far in rps with this one either... but it did span a little idea having to do with plenty of political subterfuge that I wanna write as an original novel sometime soon!**


	10. Feferi: Deal with the Unexpected Consequences of owning an apartment building

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

When Feferi inherited this old apartment building from her mother a few months ago, she had been aware of the little… incidents, that had happened. Really, it seemed that many of the rooms went without living occupants, and had her mother not expressly stated in her will that these rooms were to remain off limits, Feferi might have gone into them and started clearing out the deceased’s belongings. But that was a different story for another time, considering the incident occurring- the earthquake that was happening right then was hard to ignore, least of all hard to ignore when she was standing at the top of the stairs, ready to tumble down at a moment’s notice! She held on for dear life to the railing and ducked down.

All around her, the cheerful ocean themed decorations (which, dammit, she had paid a pretty penny for those ceramic cuttlefish and there they went) that she had bought to try and liven the place up shaking free from their holds and raining down upon the ground. The entire building was shaking, shuddering, pieces of wood and ceiling finding their way suddenly and rudely torn from their places by gravity as the quake rocked the apartments. Cod, this was an absolute travesty!

Thankfully, it wasn’t as if there was anyone else there to be caught up in the devastation of the quake. Many of the living tenants had been scared off by the apparent specters who haunted the rooms that her mother had, in her dying breaths, forbade Feferi from ever really tampering with, and now look at this place! There was an earthquake rocking the shaky foundations, and now all of the money she had poured into trying to remodel was going right down the drain right before her eyes. The only things on Feferi’s mind was holding onto the railing and covering her head to shield the dark locks from as much of the falling debri as she possibly could.

And soon, the tremors died down, leaving her kneeling against the wall at the top of the stairs. Frankly, it was a damn miracle that the entire structure hadn’t just somehow collapsed under her! She stood up, trying to solidify the jellyfish that were her knees as she looked around the place. Alright, Feferi- just one step forward, just to see if everything would cave in if the slightest move was made. Feferi took in a small breath and took a step down, her knuckles becoming a light brown from where she was gripping the railing. The step creaked ominously, but thankfully, that was all that happened. The girl let out a sigh of relief as she went downstairs, looking at the damage in its entirety. “Oh cod, it’s terri-bubble.” She mumbled to herself, leaning against a portion of the wall that was still standing. The entire place was an absolute mess of rubble, and then there were walls caving in on the other end of the lobby! Feferi took a breath, closing fuchsia eyes for a moment before opening them, deciding to try and just think positively.

She had been planning on remodeling anyway. After all, the place was getting so old, and how was she ever going to attract new tenants with a creaky old apartment with faulty heating? And oh, maybe now she could make the front lobby a little bigger, just like she had originally wanted to! She grinned to herself, looking around. Alright, now that things were put in perspective and now that she could ignore the feeling of misery trying to sweep her under, she could keep her head clear and above the water!

Now that she had a small idea of what to do, she took her cell phone out of her pocket, fixing the cuttlefish case over it (it had become a bit loose during the earthquake, and it was great to see that it hadn’t fallen off), and then looking up renovation crews. That, and a cleaning service of some kind. You can’t have a place looking like a pig sty, after all, especially with so many of the previous (living) tenants having left their stuff to be cleaned up in their panic. The girl chanced upon a site, advertising a cleaning company with some fancy French name, and they seemed to be fairly cheap. The reviews about the place were pretty much five star through and through, so to the owner of the apartments, it seemed to be the perfect choice.

With that thought in mind, she started to call them up, though she paused. Funny. She thought that she heard a sound… Well, that could have just been the old place settling down. Feferi hummed a bit to herself and then went back to her phone, making the call.

**This one was based on the Maid of Fairewell Heights game, so probably nothing will come of this, haha**


	11. Rose: See (in order to let yourself be possessed by demons from the furthest reaches of the cosmos and fight crime)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016, originally as a response to someone's superhero John prompt.

She never could have a vision at a convenient time, could she?

That was the first thought to come to Rose's head when the initial wave of dizziness was cast over her, causing her to hold tightly onto the railing that she had just been using on her way down the stairs to the subway. The next thought that came to mind was a very eloquent 'well fuck me' before her vision swam, the entirety of the stairs before her swaying as the world tilted on its axis, leaving her on the flat and not quite as precarious surface of a carpeted office floor. It was a fairly nice office, too, and Rose would have taken the time to examine the gross excess of carpet used in the decor if not for the blur crossing her vision.

Well, there was the blur crashing through the window, then the bullets. Those were sort of hard to miss when they were being so loudly fired at the figure, and they were especially hard to miss when it seemed that they were bouncing off of him and firing right at /her/. Rose may have known that since her presence wasn't actually there the bullets hailing down on her couldn't actually do much, but that didn't stop her from instinctively trying to dodge out the way and cover her head. She nearly missed having one of the behemoths in the room get thrown straight through her and out the window. That's when the vision began descending into the sort of confusion that only happened when it was going to end, and she thought that maybe she could see someone getting punched in the throat, before a man was dangled out the window.

A low, garbled voice was the only thing left when Rose caught herself back on the stairs of the subway, keeping herself from falling down the stairs just in time. Perhaps she'd subconsciously remembered a certain warning about them, in which case, Rose was going to have to thank someone for that. She'd do that later on, though; for now, there was something happening, and she was going to have to step in and do something about it. Perhaps this time, she would get at the actual scene of the crime sometime before the victim was splattered all over the ground. Maybe, if she were particularly lucky, she would be able to get a better look at the figure that seemed to appear in these visions for the past month.

She turned around, moving up the stairs as fast as she could and apologizing quickly to some woman she accidentally brushed past, trying to find a place where she would be alone. Rose doubted that taking knitting needles and her 'crystal' ball (really it was a tacky plastic piece of shit, but having somewhere to concentrate her powers helped) out in public would raise too much suspicion, but what tended to happen after that would likely raise alarm, if not cause mass hysteria. It was easy enough to find a secluded back alley, though- in this part of the city, there were many little places like this. Rose concealed herself as best she could and looked into her plastic ball, concentrating on where the scene would be happening. It took a moment of searching, but eventually she saw part of a name for a company, something enterprises. Something something Corporation. At the very least, Rose knew what the building looked like and where it was now. The crime would be happening in their main offices, and a man was going to be thrown out the window. She had twenty minutes to get there before he made impact with the ground at terminal velocity and died.

Rose didn't have the time to bother with such formalities as changing into a full body disguise or looking at other, more artificial means of channeling her power, so she decided that the quickest way she could save this man's life was to get her ass into gear and let Them in. Horrorterrors though they may have been, letting them in would provide good protection, and enough physical capability to take on the strange red menace that had perpetrated the crime in the first place. Staring into the cold plastic in her hands, Rose called out to the elder beings, granting Them access. The transformation would not have been pleasant for anyone to watch- dark skin slowly turning into a deep grey as things writhed underneath, eyes glowing bright white, hands gripping her needles tightly... Well, when it passed, such things were the least of her concerns. All she had the time to do was take a knitted violet scarf and tie it around her neck, pulling it up to cover her nose and mouth, and then set the knitting bag in a hidden place nearby.

They leant to her Their strength, and it helped her while she was sticking to the shadows and running as fast as her legs could carry her. Rose was even able to make it to the scene just as the man was thrown out the window, hurtling towards the ground below. She clutched her needles in her hands and used them to dig into the side of the building, enhanced strength making steel no match for her hold. She was quick, climbing up the building and spying a nearby the fire escape of another business, a place that would be easy enough to land on. While Rose couldn't fly or anything of the sort, she could certainly jump. It just took a moment to calculate the perfect time to do so. Rose jumped before the man could pass her by, catching him in her arms like one would a rag doll and aiming for the fire escape a little ways below. Really, the man was so light that she wondered just how he could be anything less than some strange stuffed thing with flailing puppet arms. She was no more than a black and grey blur as she passed, and soon, she landed on the fire escape, setting the man down.

Rose would have asked if he was alright, but she was unfortunately a little too beyond human speech to say anything other than garbled nonsense, so instead she turned her sights towards the building.

Now was her chance.

She was going to see just who the hell this blur of a figure was even if it was going to kill her.

**I wrote this in response of a superhero John prompt, but the rp didn't work out. However, using this as was, I had a great rp having to do with Hal wanting to protect his creator, Dirk, policeman Karkat, and journalist Kanaya! I might turn that into a fic, but I'm not sure.**


	12. (2-for-1 Pokemonstuck) Nepeta: Have A Ball! (of yarn)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016 at the same time.

Nepeta sat down in her spot, head tilting back to look up at the sky. It was probably an odd place to do it- in the middle of the road, settling down in the dirt with her legs folded criss cross applesauce, but she just couldn't help it! After all the rain and gloom of the past few days, it was such a welcome change to see the blue sky and sun again, especially since now that meant she could actually go out and run! She could actually sketch things and not end up with the paint running or the pages sticking together! More than that, though; she and her pokemon could actually go out and stretch their legs.

So that's exactly what she had done as soon as the clouds parted. She'd gone out and stretched her legs, and Pounce and Prowl (her Eevee and Shinx respectively) followed along with her. By then, the lazy little Eevee had stretched out in the sun's warmth, rolling over to have the rays hit the brown fur on his belly, while his energetic partner ran circles around him, rolling around in the dirt to get rid of the static electricity flowing through her blue fur. And in the center of it Nepeta took out her little sketchpad and pencil from the large pocket of her overalls, falling backwards on the ground to get a better view of the trees lining the little route, letting the blue Shinx eared hat fall from her head and onto the ground.

It had been almost a year since she started traveling, sure- but Nepeta always loved this little route, so near to where her hometown of Peraba Village was settled in among the flowers. She began sketching, making little shapes along the edges of the page that captured the little green leaves above her, letting light filter through them. The sun was up ahead, though not so high in the sky that it would obstruct her vision in any way, and everything looked so unerringly blue up there that it almost dazzled her for a moment, olive green eyes widening at the pretty picture taking form.

Then, she sat up, black coils of hair bouncing as she heard Prowl give a little cry, like so many of the cries she gave in battle. Nepeta's head snapped to where the little Shinx was running off to, and she could see a figure coming in at a distance. Oh, no, with all that static built up, who knows what could happen to that stranger! She scrambled up, dropping her sketchpad and pencil while chasing after the little excitable electric type. She called out, "Hey, watch out! Charged up Shinx coming through here!"

* * *

Nepeta sighed, leaning back in the little seat she had set up for herself and letting her head fall into her hand. The gym was quiet, as it often was, since a girl like herself valued stealth quite highly, but it wasn't always this way. Usually, every other day, there would be a few challengers who came to her gym to continue on their league journeys, trying to get the badge that she held onto with tightened claws. There were even days where there would be five or six people, of any age, lining up to take her on! Sometimes it was a rematch, sometimes it was the first time, but either way, Nepeta Leijon was absolutely bored to death with her quiet gym and the dim platform she occupied in the back of it.

Had the platform not been cloaked in shadow, and had the gym not been as dark as a forest, she might have been able to peer over the edge to the ladder that led up to her and down at the maze that she had so painstakingly laid out. Of course, she really couldn't do that! She had the gym dark for a reason- it made the ambushes of her ninja trainers that much more surprising, and it made the black belts and fighter girls all the more menacing. It was a perfect way to challenge oneself at the end of a long journey, and Nepeta usually reveled in being able to provide that. Then she remembered that she hadn't had someone beat her on the first try in at least a good three weeks and groaned, sinking down in her chair.

God, when was someone going to get here?! She glanced down at where Pounce de Leon, her trusty Umbreon and very first pokemon, was stretching, sitting up and looking at her with a tilted head and a mew. "I know, Pounce- there just doesn't seem to be anyone coming right now! Purrhaps it's beclaws of your purr-fect purrformance?" Nepeta often did that, inserting cat puns into her speech, especially when she was alone and not acting like an official gym leader. Someone might not have expected the dark skinned girl to be silly like that in her down time, but then again, quite a few people also seemed to underestimate her and her abilities when they first saw her! Pounce moved over to where she was, jumping into her lap.

She pet the pokemon for a minute before suddenly, she felt the vibration of the device strapped to her wrist. Glancing down at it, she grinned wide, giddy as suddenly, it seemed that someone had entered her gym and was making their way through. Finally! Some excitement! Pounce hopped off and looked in disdain at the device as Nepeta jumped up, dusting off her clothes to make sure they were still in order. Gold gloves, blue scarf, black tank top and shorts- it seemed that she was good to go! All she needed to do was wipe the Umbreon hair off her lap and wait patiently for her challenger.

**I never went too far with these, and don't really plan to use the ideas in them... weirdly enough though, both prompts actually attracted different rp approaches! The gym leader Nepeta prompt tended to draw in people who played pokemon competitively and paid attention to stats and stuff, which meant that the rps never worked out because I never played pokemon like that in my life, while the artist Nepeta prompt brought in more casual players.**


	13. (2-for-1 Hypnosis) Jane + John, Pranksters at Large

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016 for a little experiment, but continued to be used until last year.

Ah, the smell of baking. It was an intoxicating scent, one that could bring even the mightiest of lords to their knees for just a taste, should the baker play their cards right. Jane was no stranger to the scent, and she was one such baker who knew how to play her cards right, no matter how many times she left the hand face up for any foe to peruse. It was just about perfect inside- a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table, an apple pie baking in the oven, and so many vanilla scented candles that the portly woman wasn't really entirely sure how the heck things hadn't burned down just yet! Why, with all the scents of chocolate, cinnamon apples, and vanilla mixing in the air, Jane had made for herself the beginnings of the perfect crime!

Had anyone walked inside, they might have wondered why in the hell Jane was doing this much baking. Normally, Jane just baked because it was something to do outside of class once her homework was done and she had a spare moment. It was hard to resist replicating all the recipes that had been loving handed down from her great grandmama to her Dad, and then eventually down to herself. It certainly helped that her roommate seemed to like the sweets!

Which, speak of the devil, was precisely who she had this lovely little set up made for, warming up the house and making it smell like a witch's trap in the woods. The young student had a plan for what she was going to do, and much like many of her pursuits, it was nothing short of ambitious, if seemingly a little crazed by some. What young Jane Crocker was doing at that moment was preparing to trick her roommate into trance,

It was an idea that many might have called downright ridiculous, but Jane had been so curious in her research lately that it had been inevitable that she at least try! Looking over the case of the Hypno-Robber, something that sounded so much like a Saturday morning cartoon, had inspired her to look more and more into hypnosis, and, eventually, the many things that she could do with it! Perhaps she would make her dear roommate bleat like a goat whenever anyone greeted them, or perhaps she would make them forget how to open doors. Or, maybe she would make them convinced that they had slept for a hundred years and that she was a witch! Hoohoo, the possibilities were simply endless!

She heard the door unlock and scrambled to get in position. When her roommate came in, they would find her sitting on the end up the couch, a Sherlock Holmes novel in one hand, a cookie in the other, and a soft blanket laid over the back of the couch. She blinked as the door opened, glancing up and smiling at them. "Why, hello there! I wasn't expecting you back for a while now. How was your day?"

* * *

Honestly, if John had known that he was going to spend his Thursday afternoon lighting candles and draping furniture and all that other stuff he'd probably be more liable to find himself doing for pay in a home design show, he would have probably prepared himself mentally first. Well, look at him- he was currently sitting there lighting the thirteenth lavender scented candle and coughing because now he smelled like he'd just nose dived into a field of flowers. It was so sweet that it was kind of gross, actually! But it was either flowers or something like apple crisp or- and the thought of it made him gag- the infamous Betty Crocker cake scented candle. He'd already had his childhood defiled by that conniving she-devil, and he sure as hell wasn't going to defile his home with it too!

Okay, so, this wasn't exactly just *his* home. John shared this shitty little apartment with a roommate, one which didn't even know what was coming to them! Man, the look on their face when they realized what happened would be great! Or... maybe pretty underwhelming? John honestly had only kind of practiced this hypnosis stuff on himself and fell asleep every time while doing it. For all he knew, there might not have been any reaction to expect at all, which was kind of a disappointing thought.

Then again, this entire idea was sort of silly, and John wasn't one hundred percent sure that it would even work! Sure, he'd read a lot about it, and he got inspired by reading about that Hypno-Robber case, but there was still a lot to take in here. Like the fact that currently he had tea made (bleh, even though he hated the stuff), with scented candles everywhere and a little pillow and blanket fort made on the couch.

The plan of the day was simple- he was going to get his roommate all comfy cozy in their living room, and then he was gonna drop them into trance, just like that! Well, not really just like that. He was probably gonna have to talk and talk and talk, and while he was definitely good at that, he wasn't that good at covering up his lies. Whatever, though- the reward would be sweet! The possibilities were endless! John could do something like make them forget how to open doors, or make them think that the sky is fake or something like that! Oh man, what if he was able to make them act like a kid again? Actually, that might get kind of out of hand... John's meandering thoughts stopped just as he heard a key in the lock.

Okay, fuck, it was definitely show time! So John set the candle on the table with the tea, cursing at himself because fuck, what was he supposed to do to pretend to be casual? He forgot to grab a book or anything like that! Okay, shit- he'd just act as natural as he could. When his roommate came in, they would find John nestled among the pillow fort, poking his head out and grinning back at them. "Hey there! What's up?"

**I actually wrote these as an experiment to see whether people went for John prompts over Jane prompts (hence why they're almost exactly the same), and found that more people went for John! Shocker, am I right... This definitely isn't the first time I experimented with hypnosis through text, what with some psychological experiments I tried to conduct through ffnet when I was 12-14, but it's definitely the most benign haha**


	14. Jane's Magic Bakery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016.

Jane hummed to herself happily, setting the last chair down on the floor before moving to the front of the shop to switch the sign to open. There it was! Now hopefully she'd have the time to organize the pastry display by the front window before anyone came in.

It was a fairly nice day- the sun had just risen a while ago, leaving the sky with that subtle orange glow that acted as a halo around the world. Soon enough it would turn a brilliant blue, and then the customers would come flooding in for breakfast morsels, muffins and danishes and freshly made doughnuts along with coffee. Oh, she had a specialty order being picked up at eight, Jane reminded herself as the set out the fresh loaves of bread that had been baked just that morning. The poor dear needed some charisma in their banana bread, for a big meeting they were nervous about. Then there was a batch of cherry blossom petal macarons that had been floating away quite annoyingly since she arrived at four, and then-

And then, shucks, it seemed that her footing was just lost! Perhaps it wasn't the greatest idea to be organizing a display and going back into the kitchen over a still wet floor. Even then, she caught herself, eyes widening and arms flying outwards towards the heavy tray of croissants. She managed the catch the tray in her hands with minimal fuss, though a plate toppled off the counter. She seemed to have converted into some balancing act from olden times, she thought to herself as she stood on one foot, the other foot having caught the stray plate before it crashed into the very new, very special case of her newest little idea for the bakery.

A precarious situation to be sure, but not at all impossible to get out of! No matter what others seemed to think, she actually had rather good balance, and with the most delicate of maneuverings she held the heavy tray in one hand, her now freed one stretching backwards to get the plate off her foot. Once she was standing on two feet again, it was easy to set the plate down in a far less dangerous position, and she was able to go back to the display with no trouble. But, oh! How could she have forgotten?!

Jane still needed to make the little things for her newest little gag- Pastry Roulette! Of course, all the treats inside tasted just as good as any other (it just wouldn't be fair to compromise the taste), but what they did, who knew! It was a clever gimmick, in her opinion- she put some sweets, some cupcakes and tea cakes and brownies and all sorts of other little things, and for fifty cents someone could choose what they wanted from the display. Some of them were normal treats, with innocuous ingredients, along with the ever present ingredient of love. The others? Well, the effects of those were a little more uncertain, if temporary! That sky blue frosted cupcake could make someone fly for a time, or that little tin of vanilla macarons could give someone rabbit ears for the day! All Jane knew was, it was sure to be a hoot and a half when someone got one of the 'losing' cupcakes! As a business owner it was a surefire way to get a little extra money, and as a prankster it would send her gambit skyrocketing!

Now satisfied with now the front display for the morning looked, Jane moved to behind the counter to begin brewing coffee for the morning rush that would inevitably come, snagging one of the blueberry macarons on the plate on the counter. They were some of her favorite treats, after all, and they were itty bitty bite sized things to be given as samples anyway, so sue her for wanting a little sweetness. With all the machines working on coffee and tea and hot chocolate, Jane took a moment to try and find where in the heck she placed the little crime drama novel she had been reading.

Just as she thought that she needed to go look in the kitchen to see if she absentmindedly set it down near the oven, she heard the cheerful little jingle of the bell out front. It was always a treat to see people coming in early, even if they might have been dead on their feet from being up at so early an hour. So Jane called out a cheerful little, "Good morning!" from her place at the counter.

**I never went far with this one, but will be making it into a novella alongside another modern magic idea![This one has a little mock menu!](https://sam-rps-shit.tumblr.com/post/148908701816/menu-for-a-little-pinch-of-pixie-dust)**


	15. Rose- Full Time Wonderland Resident, Part-Time Riddler Nuisance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

If Rose had to listen to that insufferable crow bark one more time she was going to blast it straight into oblivion.

It was a fairly standard day for her, really- she slumped in her perch on a particularly hardy branch of a tree, one leg swaying over the side of it while the other lay perfectly still on it, two thin needles in her folded hands. Time had no meaning because it was a nonsensical construct, things whispered in the dark, and the chatter of the leaves was carried over the wind. Horrid gossiping little shits, those leaves were. If she cared to listen enough, the ones closest to her foot on the branch she was on were arguing about how one of the card guards liked a dessert. Did they like macarons or cake? Or perhaps they didn't like sweets at all?

Perhaps she might have enjoyed a good book, but the words have been dancing right off the pages lately, leaving her with airy little laughs. Rose was left with no book and the murmuring leaves continuing to babble, the disconcerting dissonance of meaningless clock ticks from twin clocks mounted on the trunk of a tree not too far, and her own thoughts. But what fun was any of that? People drove themselves sane with those boring old things, just wiggling around in one's head with silly doubts trying to darken perceptions of the colorful world that one lived in. They were driven sane, then mad, then sane, then even madder, never having a moment's repose between the thoughts of how to pass the time or how to get insane once again and the thoughts of bleak existentialism harboring nothing but idiotic problems about things that may or may not be seen.

There was that damn crow, barking at her again. She stared at the black winged thing before telling it, unimpressed, "If you were so distraught about me coming into your tree, then why are you still baying at me like that'll move me? Use your words, you stupid bird. What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?" Adjusting the cat ears on her head she tried to smile at her own inane joke, but that smile just fell flat. Literally. It was currently sitting in her lap, staring up at her, a tangle of black lines that could barely be considered three dimensional. Damn body parts, falling off all the time. Just because she used her mouth a lot gave it no right to try and run like that, even if it was understandable, what with that pun being rather weak.

She picked her lips back up and securely put them on her face, just a bit below her nose and above her chin. She left both of her needles in her lap as she reached her hands up, smoothing it back on her face before fluffing it up a bit to give it back that realistic look. With Rose's face looking back at sorts, she sank down a bit more in her perch, the little black fabric tail sewn to her skirt spilling over the edge of the tree branch to join that freely swinging leg.

None of this was curing her boredom! Here Rose was, laying in a tree while those leaves were complaining about her foot jostling them (good, let them complain, the little bastards). But what more was there to do? She didn't feel like subjecting herself to see the Queen, since she was a royal pain in the neck who would probably find a way for her to be unable to reattach her head to her neck. No one wanted to have a tea party, not right then, even though her birthday had long since passed an every day now was ripe for celebrating. She might have gone to find something 'new' but then that would get boring and fade into the 'old', once again leaving her bored.

Rose's interest was piqued, however, when she heard footsteps from up above. Turning her gaze heavenwards, she spotted through the canopy of the trees a dusty little road that had been floating over their heads for a number of years now. It used to be new, Rose remembered, and she used to have taken great pleasure in exploring and examining the road, but then it became part of the old again. Perhaps, though, this new face could offer her some measure of reprieve from her boredom?

With that thought in mind she stood up, dusting off the violet skirt, black blouse and purple jacket (which was an entirely different color from the violet, thank you very much) that she wore. Making sure that her ears and tail were still in place, she rendered herself invisible and walked upwards, resting in a convenient little chair that the branches had so helpfully made. She glanced up at the stranger, smiling a bit. At least now she could stop hearing that damned bird. That smile widened a bit, and because she needed to be seen for the stranger to hear her, Rose's black painted mouth was the first thing that appeared.

She asked, "Whither do you walk, traveler? To something new or something old?"


	16. John: Be the Immortal Wind and also Massively Depressed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

It was hard, being a kid's guardian and watching them graduate. It was hard and no one understood.

Well okay, so maybe a few people could understand, but very few of those people were guys standing at the edge of a playground where the now grown up little boy was with some friends, talking and laughing away at one of the tables. Even fewer people were completely invisible to everyone there. But such was life, John guessed glumly as he sat down on the bench beside the slide, a breeze ruffling his hair. Usually now would be a great time to go over there and make a big wind carry away a stray graduation cap or ruffle up some hair, but honestly? He kind of wasn't feeling it right then.

John's been at this for about as long as he can remember, from the first time he saw a lonely little girl playing with her little straw doll back when people were still afraid that a witch would come carry them away in the dead of night. After the first century or so though, it got- what, tedious? Or just plain sad? Here he was, probably the most powerful being in existence (he had control over the literal *wind*, could drum up gales and tornadoes at a whim, so he was entitled to brag, thank you very much) and he was pretty much invisible to everyone except a few kids and maybe the odd psychic or medium. But the latter were rare, and they tended to just die off quicker than the kids did, so he'd sort of resigned himself to playing babysitter long ago.

And for the most part, playing babysitter was pretty fun! The kids who could see him were usually little sweethearts, and well, as it turned out he was pretty good with them. Just make a lot of goofy faces and play a lot of jokes on the adults and they were practically vibrating with mirth, happy and amused and more than a little awed. But eventually, they grew up, and inevitably, he lost track of time, and when he went to check on them they were either middle aged with families, in the hospital, or just plain stone cold dead. Of all those kids that he had checked on, maybe, what, two of them? Yeah, two of them, could still see him and were even amazed at being able to see him again. Those two were dead by then. Really, that was a fucking great thing to be thinking about, all of his kids dying.

God dammit, he was immortal. Shouldn't he have been immune to midlife crises or something? Or what, was this an existential crisis and he was just going to go lay down in a field somewhere and groan about the meaning of life or space or his own inconsistent biology or something? This was stupid. Stupid, stupid, dumb. That was the dumbest idea that he'd ever had and he kind of wanted to hit his head against a concrete wall for thinking about doing something so useless. Hey, it's not like anyone would stop him from doing it either.

John groaned loudly to himself as the little group of newly graduated college bound students got up and left, sinking off of the shitty plastic bench and laying fully on the ground. If he was about to have a crisis, he may as well get it over with, and he was too lazy to go make use of his inconsistent and impossible biology to turn into wind and find a more remote location. Time to wallow in self pity like a little shit.

He was about to close his eyes when he heard footsteps. Great, someone was coming, and since they probably couldn't see him, he was probably going to get trampled on. John let out another loud, dramatic groan as he propped himself up slightly back on his elbows, sitting up slightly to see who was coming. "Come on man, go away," He called to them, just in case they could hear. "Can't you see that the wind spirit needs time to fucking die internally?" To punctuate this, he lazily waved a hand, sending a large gust of wind towards them without at first seeing if they were a kid or adult or what.

Oh, shit, hopefully they weren't too young if they were a child.

**This was based on the fact that, as a kid, I was absolutely convinced that the wind itself was an anthropomorphic entity and also my friend. This kind of immortal caring for humanity idea would later become the basis of a shared modern magic au, with[this Golden Kamuy fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14524995/chapters/40170215) being the result**


	17. Dirk: Be The Anime (the anime being One Punch Man)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

"Breaking news! It appears that a monster has just risen from the depths of the river running through the North side of the city!"

Dirk sat in front of the screen, watching lazily while slurping down some shitty ramen noodles faster than a tricked out roomba devoured the dirt in whatever lazy ass's house it was doomed to service until it inevitably broke down. Much like the tricked out roomba in the next room, picking up scrap metal to be used for later, a mechanical buzz acting as the white noise to the hippie whale song of the newscaster's trying-not-to-panic-but-panicking-fucking-badly voice. "Civilians are recommended to remain calm and evacuate the city, as this seems to be a Tier 4 Terror!" Then because the media needed to sensationalize the tragedy currently happening despite the fact that this was the only thing on every fucking channel, the footage cut to hordes of screaming people not remaining calm in the slightest, running away screaming and crying.

Jesus fucking Christmas up the ass with a spiny pine cone, one would think that people would be used to these entire monster emergencies, since they seemed to happen literally every other week. He guessed not, since the average citizen would get their ass handed to them on a silver platter with a side of their own kidneys and their own still beating heart. The entire sacrificial buffet, all on one plate, just for them. Dirk guessed that their panic was justified then, as he drank down the broth and heard, "Oh! A disturbing development! It appears that even the Second Champion ranked heroes that were sent are having trouble defeating this terrifying beast of nature!"

Dirk slowly lowered the bowl from his mouth, watching the screen flash with images of fallen heroes, all injured in some way, and one dead. And here Dirk thought that he might have been able to just sit back and relax for the afternoon. He was sure that someone would eventually come along and KO the enormous catfish looking thing on what looked like a dozen or so legs, but that thing was causing quite a bit of damage, and even some of the more acclaimed heroes were down. Dirk didn't have to finish his project until maybe next week, and it's not like he ever actually spoke to people, so he didn't really have anything to do, pressing or otherwise.

Eh. He had nothing better to do, so he may as well take care of this shit.

It took some time running across rooftops and passing by both scared and downright bewildered civilians, but eventually, Dirk was able to leave the nearly hollowed out shithole of an apartment building he called home and come to the much more glamorous North side. Or it used to be glamorous, the last time he came up there to have a look at some advanced processors- now all that glamour had been dimmed down and dulled with those iron mallets that the creature a bit away called its legs. Damn, what a shame. They had some pretty good shops that he'd wanted to hit up at least once to get some ideas for his robotics, but he guessed that idea was crushed to rubble. The thing currently crushing what was probably the twentieth store was down below, and Dirk pulled his hood more securely over his face.

It must have been hilarious, to this creature, to see him jump down to face it. There was a monstrous laugh, like twelve different bassoons being thrown into a wood chipper, and then he heard the most oddly slimy tiny voice, "So what does this useless caped crusader have for me, the Indestructible Trilobite?" Did all of these fucks have to give themselves names? It was all hells of ridiculous, even more ridiculous than this thing mistaking his sweet cloak and hood combo for a cape. Sure, working the entire Olden Time Nobleman angle for his costume might have seemed weird, but the small bit of armor that acted as a tunic was handy, and the tights highlighted his legs. That, and the crown was an actually important piece of tech that allowed him to do little things like scout out the electrical grid of the area. Power was mostly out, but there were generators nearby that could be used to his advantage, if this proved to be a challenge. Dirk hoped to God that this would be a challenge.

Ever since starting this entire hero shit, he's had maybe a dozen fights that ended up being worthwhile, and that was all towards the beginning of this gig. He liked to hope that maybe this thing, who literally left a hero dead on the ground, could maybe pose somewhat of a challenge, making the fight actually fun for once. So when Dirk said, annoyance coloring his tone, "It's a cloak, asswipe." he still reared back and ran at the being, orange sparking in his gauntlet clad hands. Then, he aimed at the thing, and it gave a shrill scream as it's soul was taken in literally a few seconds flat.

He stared as the body deflated, sagging to the ground, dead. In his hand, there was the little glass thing that was left over of its soul. He'd seen monsters before that could break free of what he could do, had the soul power to fire shards at him and leave him running the field. Long ago, his powers might have sparked, and then they might have done nothing. Before, he had to weaken them to steal their souls, and now it only took one hit... Dirk dropped to his knees, smashing the ugly black soul into shards under his fist that didn't even hurt him in the end. It barely ached.

Why the fuck did he even do this, anyway? It would all end in the same way every time, no matter what he was up against. In the end, all it took was...

"Dammit.... One move..."


	18. Gemstuck Karkat: Go on the Run (or Die)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

Fuck. Damn it, shit, hell, stars, and every other curse that came to mind, because this was not going well. This was going the exact opposite of well. This was being dunked in a black hole with a cracked gem level of shit.

What would that shit be, someone might have asked him, to make him panic so badly? Well, it was pretty fucking obvious, in Bloodstone's opinion, so obvious that he would have punched someone with his small, malformed fist and somehow found a way to knock them into the nebulous airways of Homeworld before ever spelling out for them with small ciphers and charts what shit was going on. After all, the shit he was currently in was so deep that every running step he took to the warp pads that were strictly forbidden felt like it was weighing down on his bare gravity connectors, dragging him back slowly to where a large hammer waited to smash him to microscopic pieces.

Bloodstone's gem pulsed in his thoracic cavity, glowing slightly. Shit, they were getting close, and he could feel their hatred and determination to wrap their grubby fucking hands around his walking enablers to pull him back to where it would be far easier for the Executioner gem to drag him. This was blasphemy- this was fucking madness, what he'd just done, asked for something he could never have from the Diamond that hated him to hell and back.

But he'd just wanted to serve her. For star's sake, he just wanted to fight, since he couldn't heal anymore and since 'morale' was deemed a stupid thing for soldiers to have. Morale made cocky fighters- shattering lust made for efficient soldiers.

Three Obsidians were on his tail, and he had to work fast. He picked a warp pad, any of the warp pads, and without looking he went on one, letting the stream of light carry him away. It wouldn't be long before the Obsidians caught up, though, so Bloodstone went through more. First he came to one where the air was thick with glass, glass that barely phased him as he tried to keep himself together. Another had immense heat and then immense cold, but it didn't bother him as he found another warp pad, to a rocky, strange world with a strangely grand white castle in the distance. A palace. Shit, no, too close, far too fucking close.

He blindly stepped on one more, and then he paused, looking around himself. There was nothing in sight but strange, green... things. No more warp pads here. This was the end of the line, so he'd have to keep going somehow. Or if he had to keep going, he'd have to slow their progress down. Bloodstone stepped off, and from the strange, sideways tear drop gem on his chest, took out his sickle. Normally, the weapon was only useful for disarming people, but right then he was determined that no one could follow him to wherever this place was.

Bloodstone worked for what felt like tense, horrible days, hacking away at the crystalline surface of the pad until it was all nothing more than rubble. He had no clue where he was, if there were still any other warp pads on this planet, or if he could truly trust this place, but at least for the moment, he felt like he was safe. So after a quick moment of rest, he let his sickle disappear, and then began walking.

For a long while, Bloodstone could only look at his surroundings in cautious curiosity. Everything seemed to be green, and what wasn't was some shade of brown, maybe with some splash of another color. Amber yellow things that smelled something sweet, ruby red round balls in between green explosions of something, and an off very light brown path were what greeted him. If Bloodstone hadn't just been running for his life, he might have thought that this was... nice. But he literally had just been running for his life, and in fact was still currently in the process of running for his life, because the Empire was going to be harder to shake off than the crusty shit on your gem after a long day of running around like a fucking lunatic, shouting at the top of his projected voice for soldiers to regroup, rally up, it was time for fucking battle. That was always a pain in the ass to clean up.

Soon enough, though, the long cylindrical brown rods with green things on them began to thin out, and in front of him was a sight that was almost so familiar that it made him double take. There were structures, no, buildings, some going up to the sky while others were lower to the ground. It reminded him of the small compound that he had spent his short few centuries in, but the colors were all off. Instead of clear pink hues and deep violets and reds, it was all just grey and white, with some color thrown in here and there with a dull pink roof or reddish-brown building.

It put him on edge. There were other life forms here. And then, he was put more on edge, because he heard the unmistakable sound of someone coming towards him. Footsteps. Not only were there some strange organisms here, but it seemed that he had someone there. Bloodstone reached for his gem, pulling the handle of it out and gripping tightly, long dress and cloak rustling around him with the wind.

Then he broke the silence by barking out, "Who's there?! Show yourself, now!"


	19. Rose: Be the Bitter Magical Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

All Rose wanted was some damn time to herself. Was that so hard to ask for? Was it so hard to ask whatever beings up above that derived sick pleasure in the torment of some unsuspecting mortal for a moment, nay, even a nanosecond of alone time not interrupted by some inane weaboo bullshit come straight to life? Apparently so, Rose sulkily thought at the annoying four eyed cat hopped onto her shoulder.

The feline spoke, because of course it fucking did. The universe simply had to maintain the tropes that made the phrase "art imitates life" so true in the first place.

"Rose! There's a monster attacking the kitten orphanage down the street!" Of course it was the most nonsensical sounding institution that needed to be saved too. Wasn't a 'kitten orphanage' just a specialized cat shelter? Why kittens, specifically? Were regular fluffy animals just not vulnerable enough to go after, or was this some stupid looking creature that she was going to fight who would give her some novel length of backstory on why it hated kittens so much specifically in some stupid attempt at character development before she would be permitted to kick its ass into whatever form it would revert into for the cat on her shoulder to gobble up. Some days, Rose wondered if she'd ever done something before death and was summarily sent to hell, and if Vodka Mutini (what the fuck kind of name for a Guardian, as she called herself, was that anyway) was just some sort of demon sent to torment her for eternity.

It hadn't always been this way, though. Oh, Rose did have a backstory for why she was currently trudging down the street, groaning and fingering a little yellow sun charm in her pocket as her apparent 'Guardian' pawed at her to go faster.

But why the hell would she go into that? For one thing, that would have been the most stereotypical bullshit that she could have gotten into, trying to make herself darling in the eyes of whoever she told her past to so that it made it seem like she had a character, and for a second thing, fuck no. She was bitter, annoyed at what would happen, sure, but Rose wasn't one to get distracted by frivolous bullshit when lives were apparently on the line (unless it was her own life, but that was another story for another time).

Unfortunately, there was some frivolous bullshit that she couldn't just skip, no matter how boring and tedious it might have been, and no matter if the villain could just, oh, *escape* while it was happening. Rose wondered briefly why they never just ran away or attacked her while she was transforming, but then Mutini hissed on her shoulder and she sighed, taking the little yellow trinket from her skirt pocket. "Fine, fine, I'm here, now hold on for just one moment. Please. If it can wait for me to go through this, it can wait for me to actually find a place to transform away from the wandering eye of any civilian scrambling away down the street." It honestly surprised her how often people still panicked, with these monsters literally appearing every single fucking day, like clockwork, nearly at the same time each day. During lunch, of course, in bright daylight.

She walked into a nearby alley, which *looked* fairly empty, and shooed the cat off of her shoulder. Vodka Mutini leapt to the ground and paced, ears twitching as she looked back at the building where... something was attacking. Hell if Rose knew what it was, or really cared. But now came the embarrassing part, and the part that would have her once again going out and buying hair dye.

She threw the trinket up in the air, letting the yellow sun gleam in the sunlight before shouting (because of fucking course that was the thing that activated the charm and not just letting her quietly transform with dignity, like the heroes in stupid unitards often did in the media), "Hero of Light, transform!" It wasn't even anything special, or an incantation. It was literally the most generic sentence that she had ever uttered, and had this entire process not been so mind numbingly stupid, she might have winced at the fact that she had to forego her normal eloquence with words for that.

Then the transformation began, a beam of light enveloping Rose and doing two things; replacing her clothes and burning away the dye in her hair so that naturally purple locks ended up showing instead.

Actually, the purple hair might explain a few things, now that Rose thought about it.

But whatever the case, an indeterminate amount of time later (if only someone else knew, then Rose might actually have timed how long this process took), she was back on the ground, frustrated because she was making Revlon a small fortune with how much money she spent re dying her hair to a normal blonde color and would have to shell out some more for that night. Honestly, it was a small miracle that no one ever asked why she was blonde one half of the day and then had purple hair the other half. Either that, or it was a tragedy and everyone around her were just brain dead.

Now dressed in a short, frilly orange dress that just barely ended above the knee (and was lined with white lace and yellow ribbons), blue ballet flats (with ribbons) and a blue ribbon in her hair (of course), she pulled out her weapon- two snowy white needles with orange ribbons on them and a glowing violet gem at each end of the hilt, Rose started to march out to where the villain was currently attacking, huffing out a breath. This outfit was hardly practical for actual fighting, and anyone who might have garnered any enjoyment from seeing a thirteen year old in such garb were either running away as fast as their legs could carry them or in prison.

"In the name of Light, I will blah blah blah." Rose said dryly, "Can we please hurry this up? My woefully short American lunch period ends in fifteen minutes and I don't want to be late for my underwhelming literature block nor explain why I was going off our shitty middle school campus. Again."


	20. Dave: Experience Every FFnet de-age Cliche At Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

Dave really wasn't sure what the hell was happening. It all started off easily enough- he was here on the meteor, living with some aliens in some "quirky" sci-fi dramedy Netflix Original shoving two different species together. Rose went off to be alien girlfriends with a literal giantess (how the actual fuck did someone get that tall? sure Kanaya was an alien but that just wasn't fair) and Vriska went off to do... whatever the fuck Vriska does. Honestly, with the splitting headache jack hammering against Dave's head with the force of an iron mace going to town on some unsuspecting foe on the medieval battlefield, it was a little hard to think.

Which was a disconcerting feeling for someone like him, who had a tendency to think about everything way too damn much. He'd be listening to Rose drunkenly ramble and his mind would just flash into the Little Shop of Horrors song where the plant is trying to push the meek white guy to kill so it can eat. Did thoughts like that have to come up from the mere mention of something tangentially related to it? Probably not. But it's not as if Dave was in any real position to be pondering that, what with the fact that he was currently sprawled on the bed, face buried into the sheet to try and block out the fact that for some reason, it felt like his entire body was closing in on itself. He had gone to his room, after all, so that no one could bear witness to any of the shit that was currently happening to him. Fuck, how had he gotten sick?

At the very least, he hoped that this was just him getting an alien sickness or something, because even though it just sort of pounced on him and was currently batting him around before it got to actually devouring him, he would have preferred to deal with that over some sort of weird, game nonsense, whenever that would happen. In an attempt to see just how bad it was, he attempted to sit up in his bed to stumble his way over to a mirror. Unfortunately, it seemed that apparently this entire room was a tilt-a-whirl, because everything around him was swimming like a cheap tornado effect from the Wizard of Oz.

That would have been a totally sweet metaphor to continue, but he just couldn't. The moment he tried stepping out of bed, his knees buckled. Just as his head was hitting against the floor, he blacked out completely.

When Dave woke back up, he rubbed his head, wincing a bit. Shit, had he lost another strife? How bad was it this time? He slowly got to his feet, but everything was... different, there, somehow. It was a lot more grey than the off color white walls of the apartment. Not to mention, Bro wasn't there to stitch him up. That probably meant that this time he didn't get beat up too bad, which was a fucking blessing- how was he going to explain to his teacher some stitches on his side? He tried to take a step, but he ended up tripping, falling into a pool of red clothing.

He definitely wasn't wearing anything that he had ever seen before. These clothes were way too big, falling partway off of him. Not to mention, there was this stupid cape. Bro had said that those were dumb as shit. What kind of cool ninja dude wore a cape, of all things? No ninjas, that's who, because they were long drapey pieces of cloth that were stupid. Even so, Dave kept it on, mostly because this really didn't look like his room and he didn't want to end up butt naked in some maniac's house. That'd be so uncool.

Looking around the room reveals three things- one, a pair of really sweet aviators that were too big for him but would work since he didn't have the shades that Bro got him for some reason. Two, half of a sword, kind of like half of one of the shitty katanas that Bro kept around the apartment, but just the fit size for him to tote around. And three, he found that the door was unlocked. Dave didn't know where he was, and he didn't know what things the people there might want to do to him, so he figured that it was best to make like Forest Gump and make a run for it, so that he could find his Bro and leave.

So Dave opened the door and (after rolling up the now too long pants) went out into the dim corridor to wherever the hell it would take him.

He had to find Bro.


	21. ATLAStuck Jade: Be the Kiyoshi Warrior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

Jade hummed to herself, looking up at the sky. It really was a beautiful day! Sure, there were a few dark clouds off in the distance, towards the beach and water, but a storm would be slow to come and even then storms were fun too! A lot of mud was left over to do a few neat tricks with, and it would give her something to do once she was done with her work for the day. It wasn't like there was a lot of that either!

Lessons with the newer girls were over by then, and they had already gone to go wash their makeup off and do chores for their mamas while the rest of the Warriors were left to train and do as they needed. She thought that maybe the boss had taken a few of the others out to the field to work on their fanwork, but she could never be too sure- she always kind of had her head preoccupied with other things! There was usually always so much to do around the place- she had to clean up the dojo from practice and help Ms. Andorra across the way with her rock garden, which could be slightly tedious (if really pretty simple) if she were being a little more fickle than usual that day, and then there was the statue to clean up. Otherwise, though, she technically had a day off.

Man, it was so weird thinking about that. Jade, having a day off! It almost sounded silly! But really, she did have a few plans for the afternoon, including trying to figure out where all her pumpkins kept disappearing off to and moving a little higher up into the mountains to play around for a bit. After all, if she was going to have an entire day (well, afternoon, but that was still something!) off, then she wanted to be able to see what she could see up there. There were always such neat little things to find, if someone looked hard enough! Maybe today would be a good day to hunt for crystals, Jade thought absentmindedly as she almost cut herself on a fan that she had been working on. Was it really a good idea to be sitting outside while polishing deadly weapons? Probably, but with summer setting in, she just couldn't help herself! Jade set aside the last of the fans and carefully folded them up, moving to get up and place them somewhere safe inside.

There was only one thing left- tending to Kyoshi's statue. It was an honor that she took on almost every day, because it seemed to be the best job she could do, next to patrolling! Kyoshi had been a great Avatar, and she had been amazing, protecting this island. Maybe one day Jade would be able to do as much as her- protect as many people as she had.

It was her job to clean the shrine and sometimes repaint it, but the paint wasn't chipping or peeling away from good old Kyoshi just yet! She moved to the statue and did the simple duty of cleaning the old wooden thing. Some kids had taken to throwing mud at it, and Jade had to wonder what would possess anyone to deface a landmark, but at the very least it could easily be taken off with some good old fashioned earthbending. With the statue of Kyoshi clean, that about took care of her chores for the day! She grinned up at her handiwork, and then she bowed before leaving. It would have been rude not to pay her respects, after all!

Jade took her hair down from the tight bun that it had been weaved into, grabbing a cloth on her way out as she started her rush down the street to find her way back home. There she could put up her armor and set off! She was so busy starting to get the metal headdress that rose like a pair of shiny horns (or polar dog ears, her warrior sisters had teased her) that she almost didn't miss the rustling of something walking nearby, either along the sand or in the forest that their Kyoshi statue stood guard of. It may have been a kid, or it may have been something else- whatever the case, she could make a show of it. If whatever was there wasn't serious, Jade could still put on a little show.

Her fans were in her hands in an instant, unfurling and glinting gold in the sun. Underneath her feet rose a small chunk of rock, levitating her into the air slightly as she turned, dark hair weaving about her face. In the most authoritative voice she could muster, Jade barked out, "Who's there?"


	22. Dave: Have a Totally Rational Fear of the Dentist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

Yeah, Dave was kind of standing on the edge of the handle, and it was taking all his willpower not to shove himself off the plank pirate style and do a fucking pirouette. At the same time, though, he figured it was understandable to most people with a sense of self and a drive to want to protect the fleshy meat suits that had apparently been so graciously gifted to them from birth. Hell, he'd known about this for months, so there was no need to freak out or anything.

So Dave had four impacted wisdom teeth that hurt like a bitch, and a date for surgery that was directly the next day.

It was nothing to get twisted up about, he tried to convince himself as his stomach first digested whatever butterflies had been swallowed in his sleep and then got to work on twisting itself into Boy Scout knots to try digesting itself. Dave wasn't even anywhere near the hospital right then- he was in his room in his shitty little apartment, staring up at the ceiling as a spring jabbed him directly in the vertebrae of his lower spine. He was laying down on his bed, a phone in his hand resting loosely on his stomach and probably still flashing with some especially shitty fanart that someone had done of Sweet Bro riding on a pony ass into the sun. If that image wasn't already slightly surreal, Dave's dumb brain had to add to it by reminding him that shit would be a lot worse with the vicodin.

His mouth ached in a vaguely abstract way. It was three in the morning and he had surgery not only tomorrow, but in six hours. He guessed that it kind of didn't matter if he slept or not now, since apparently the doctors were going to knock him right the fuck out, but that thought just made the knots in his stomach constrict like some boa had slithered up his ass to have at that sweet sweet intestine meat. He couldn't even go sneak to the fridge to grab an apple juice and down it like a war vet downing beer because he wasn't supposed to eat or drink before the surgery, and he'd already commenced his pigging out hours before so that he could mourn the loss of his solid food diet in the next few weeks. Oh, fuck, the next few weeks were going to be fucking torment, probably all gross and bloody and he wouldn't even remember it all-

Okay. Wow, he was low key freaking the fuck out. Sure Dave hadn't moved a muscle in literally twenty solid minutes, but that didn't stop his mind from running around in circles, trying to chase its own tail like the stupidest mutt in existence. Maybe he should have, like, actually thought this over in the months leading up to this instead of gritting his teeth against the mouth pain and shoving as much crunchy shit in his mouth as humanly possible. Maybe he should have actually told someone instead of keeping it to himself, considering the fact that the only ones who currently knew how long Dave would be out of commission were his professors and his boss.

It was three in the morning and they were probably all asleep, but Dave decided that the best thing to do with his time at that very moment was tell at least one person. Just text the first name on his contact list and let them know that he might need a ride or something after the surgery, if the effects of the anesthesia didn't wear off for a while. Or at the very least explain why for the next week he might suddenly go full Exorcist and start bleeding at the mouth.

After what seemed like an eternity, Dave moved his arm, mildly surprised that he hadn't somehow turned into stone and that his arm hadn't started creaking. Could stone creak? He was fairly certain it didn't, and that was metal, but he was kind of sleep deprived and too caught up with the snake being digested by his ravenous stomach to deal with some crossed metaphors. He texted the first number on his contact list.

TG: hey good news   
TG: you have the astute pleasure of mentally hearing my sexy voice   
TG: you better feel lucky 'cause not every guy can get a damn fox like me   
TG: hey man are you up i gotta tell you the sickest thing   
TG: sick as in the 'gross why the fuck do you have an entire shrine dedicated to ben stiller/howard stern m/m slash dont like dont read' not in the 'holy shit these beats you make are the illest things this side of the mississippi'   
TG: hey   
TG: answer me dude you cant just leave me hanging in cyberspace like this


	23. Karkat doesn't make nearly enough to deal with this supernatural shit, but it's minimum wage so what do you expect really

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in late 2016

If there was one thing that Karkat was getting sick of, it was these god damn customers.

Then again, what else did he expect? He had chosen to take the night shift at a shitty Seven-Eleven with no bathroom inside and lights that flickered despite the fact that he'd nearly broken his fucking neck replacing each and every bulb inside, then nearly electrocuted himself taking a look at the wires to figure out what the fuck was going on with them. They worked fine in the morning! Everything was fucking peaches and cream down on the prairie in the morning! But it was like clockwork- once it got dark, there went the lights, flickering away and trying to unsuccessfully start a shitty rave of one. There wasn't even anything good around here that could pass off for refreshments at a rave. All they had were processed brands probably lining up the pocket of some rich fuck with stoner cash and off brand coffee that tasted like what would run from the seven circles of flame residing in Satan's ass crack.

And that wasn't even the weirdest fucking part of it! Every night, five minutes to two on the dot, some weird assholes came in. Karkat remembered the first time it happened- one fifty-five, and then there was this little girl. At first he hadn't even paid attention to it because shit, he had just started this job, and he was still trying to figure out how in the fuck he was going to stay awake solely on spite and shitty coffee. He'd stared at the silhouette of the girl that ended up staring at him, watching the mist roll in as she just stood there and fucking stared, no parent in sight. Then he had a goddamn iron jaw full of teeth trying to clamp down on his neck, and that had sent him into a frenzied fucking screaming fit, as it would any rational human being who was both half asleep and had an apparent monster trying to tear their throat out. That was then, though. Now, months later, he would sat there, retail voice by then shot straight to hell where one or two of whatever creatures came had claimed to crawl out of, keeping a close eye on them to make sure they didn't do shit like crawl on the ceiling and leave muddy footprints (asshole goblin, that had taken so much fucking time to clean) or attack him.

Honestly, sometimes Karkat wondered if he had an actual death wish, especially now as he leaned against the counter with a shitty romance novel which was basically smut like five pages in and the lights flickering, soda machine ominously humming in the background. That might have been partially true. Mostly though, it was the fact that this job paid ridiculously well for a service job and the fact that it was either this, or lose rent trying to find a job while having the banks on his ass for not paying his student loans. What the fuck was he supposed to do, find another job? In the economy? He'd take his chances with the creatures of the night, thanks.

His phone buzzed slightly in his pocket and he glanced at it, huffing out a breath. Slow night. It was already almost time for the freak show to start, so Karkat set aside his book and made sure he had everything he needed. There was a broom to knock a few assholes in the head, a few flower charms that according to the internet worked against spells, and a metal bat for just in case. He had pretty much everything needed to chase away any thieving spectres and demons and aliens and eldritch abominations and whatever the fuck else his physically and emotionally exhausted mind could conjure up at the moment. Hell, maybe if he were lucky, he'd get the supernatural shitheads who actually paid for their shit instead of bolting, since the cameras were all suspiciously off! But Karkat didn't count on his chances of that. Things rarely went well for him in the first place, and with his shit luck and his skill to fuck up anything combined, he was probably screwed again.

The time hit one fifty-five, and Karkat huffed out a breath, briefly running a hand through the rat's nest of black curls on his head that he'd long since given up trying to tame. Then he turned towards the door, resisting the urge to reach for the bat already as he called out, "Okay, time to come in! Whatever asshole is out there coming in, welcome, hello, whatever other fake cheerful bullshit. Just get in here, get what you want and leave. I have shit to clean up in addition to your Exorcist style asses!"

**I had originally wanted to make this into a JotaKak au for Jojo's, but have since decided to turn it into a novella along with the modern magic bakery concept and a third!**


	24. The Origins of Bee Movie AU Sollux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in late 2016 at 3am, while giggling the entire time

According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. It's wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway, because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.

The psiionics and constant state of loathing his own goddamn existence fueling him with spite and unexplainable psychic energy certainly helped too.

That was what Sollux was doing at that moment- flying. Not by flapping his paper thin shitty membranes of wings, but by using the unexplainable and unknowable psychic energy to float around the hive. He might have actually done something, like make some stupid inane pun that fit with his species, but he was so tired of fucking bees and honey that if he had a choice, he would rather make eye beams come out of his eyes and destroy all the weird, wriggly maggots and honey stores so that this place couldn't even survive the winter. Unfortunately, it seemed that whatever coked up God decided to give a fucking bee psychic powers had neglected to make them that powerful unless he was eating honey.

Sollux fucking hated honey. Sure, that was basically all he ate, but it also did shitty things to his stomach that made him want to gouge out his own eyes more than usual. His two, single pupiled eyes, because not only was he apparently some freak of nature, he also had a face like a human that made him fall so deep into the Uncanny Valley that day by day he was digging a hole deeper for himself with his four, spindly, unnecessary fingers. Those didn't even make biological sense, did they? Why the fuck would a bee need opposable thumbs? Oh God he even hated thinking about this.

He looked over the obnoxiously vomit yellow (or honey yellow, but considering the fact that they all literally vomited honey up to make it the way it was, he much preferred the former) where some of his creepy, glassy eyed, smiling brethren were bumbling around, all abuzz with joy or whatever emotion they could feel at that moment. The only emotion Sollux could bring himself to feel was a primal, deplorable sense of disgust, and he turned away from their sickly sweet saccharine shithive maggot filled faces to look outside the hive. Because windows were a thing. Why there would be windows in a place where all the workers were being forced into labor for the rest of their lives for one singular communist monarch so that they could be teased with freedom never within reach was a mystery, but it did pretty much what any elitist communist monarch wouldn't want- it made him want to go into the outside world.

Not because he wanted to do any sappy shit like start his own hive with bee capitalism or find love with a bee regardless of gender (because he was a fucking bee and had no concept of it) or even try to figure out why that enormous human comes and gases the place occasionally- no, he just wanted to get the fuck out of dodge and have a place to brood on his own. As it stood, Sollux was always confronted with some asshole or another, trying to do the same chitchat every day, having to deal with gasps at his language as if they all weren't technically adults- fuck, it was like he was in some shitty kids movie. Which bees, despite having no concept of capitalism or gender, apparently had.

Now that he thought about it though... what the hell was stopping him? The Imperial Drones? The Imperial Drones could suck his chitin covered antenna, is what they could do. They may have had bee guns and bee swords, but Sollux had the power of Psiionics ex Machina. The workers behind him were too caught up with their own busy bee routine and dancing to each other, so they wouldn't give a shit. Fuck. Time to shake a stinger and get the everloving fuck out of dodge.

Sollux buzzed gently as he picked up a nearby tool, and then chucked that shit through the window. Which was made of some crystalized honey shit. Boy was Sollux glad to be leaving this shit behind.

Finally, Sollux darted into the outside world, feeling the sun on his striped body and blatantly ignoring the calls of some of the workers who had seen it. Let those assholes tell the Queen Bee- he didn't care- he was goddamn free, and there was no way that they could entice him back into it. He shouted a triumphant, "Fuck you!" to anyone who cared to listen to his slightly buzzy, scratchy bee voice and flew away-

Only to bump into something. Fucking ow.

**This prompt sparked not one, but two and soon to be three crossover fics with Homestuck, and now it's become a tradition for me to write at least one bee movie au fic for each fandom I get extremely invested in. The hubris of my past self has trapped me here in this loop of bee movie shit and there's no escape**


	25. Dave: Find yourself In a Tokyo Godfathers Rip Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in late 2016, while in tears
> 
> TW: Child abandonment, mentions of child abuse

Fuck, it seemed like Jack Frost had graduated from nipping at noses to full on Falcon punching people in the fucking gut, Dave mused as he walked through the frigid streets of Houston, shivering despite a Macy's worth of clothes on his person.

Winter had settled itself in and thrown its snow covered feet up on the coffee table after kicking an unusually warm fall to the curb like a whimpering mutt. The thought of it ever getting hot in this city again just didn't seem possible, what with winter apparently having worked out way more since the last year and was swole enough to take all the other seasons out of the picture and them its bitches. Usually it wasn't that bad, but apparently people were talking about there being the coldest front in history on the way directly after the one they were currently in, and they hadn't even made it to the real frozen hell that was January yet. Fuck, Dave might just have frozen to death yet.

The day was frigid, the clouds overhead ominous and vaguely mood setting, and Dave could see his breath out in front of him as he walked through the shadier back alleyways of the city towards his apartment. He'd have to try and explain to Bro why the hell he'd missed the bus, and that explanation process wasn't something that he was looking forward to- so he decided that, fuck it, if he was already gonna be in trouble then he may as well make use of his time for a bit of urban exploring. Sure, this kind of excavation didn't actually lend itself to much more than some rancid cartons of milk and some possible mugging attempts, but the way Dave figured it, he was going to be walking into a nuclear war zone of ironic bullshit, so he may as well charge up a Fatman 2.0 of his own to drop before going in. Did nuclear weapons even need to charge? Hell if Dave knew- his forte was dead shit and ancient wars, not the killing tech used in them.

He turned the corner, pulling his beanie down over his ears to keep them from freezing off his head and wrapping his two coats a little more securely around himself. The last thing Dave needed was to freeze a body part off, especially since it would have been a damn shame to never be able to listen to his ill beats ever again. How else would he have been able to learn and make more music? The answer was, he wouldn't have been able to, which was damn sad for everyone involved. A world without the godly gift of his fire was not a world he was sure he ever wanted to be in.

About that time, two things happened. The first was that he realized that he was lost, and the second was that he realized he could hear something wailing.

What in the everloving fuck was that ear piercing shit? Dave looked around himself, suddenly cognizant of the fact that he had never seen this fucking alley before, nor did he have any fucking clue where it lead or what the street up ahead was. He didn't have a damn clue where he was, and he didn't have a katana either- all he had was his shitty little swiss army knife, an awareness of his surroundings, and the fact that that crying was rising in pitch. Fuck, was that even human?

He couldn't see anyone around him, so he guessed that he was alone in this alley. Alone with whatever the fuck was making that godawful, incessant noise. It sounded like the airhorns he'd layered in on some of his shit for fun, but somehow, it was ten times worse- at least with those air horns, he could figure out how to layer them into something a little more pleasing to the ear than Symphony No. 5 in a pitch that dogs would fucking abhor- at least with the air horns, they didn't sound nearly as fucking heartbreaking, like an animal was dying.

Eventually, Dave figured out where it was coming from. Cradled in a box between a stained, piss smelling mattress and an old rusted bike that was missing its wheels and horn, was a weakly squirming bundle in a grey blanket. Oh shit. Oh, shit. Dave's heart stopped in his chest for a moment, and despite the fact that he knew no one was there to see, he still worked to repress the urge to grimace or make a face as he slowly approached, confirming the absolute worst.

There was a baby. A fucking infant. What the *fuck*.

For a few seconds, Dave just stared at the little bundle, bawling its eyes out. They had light hair, fat tears rolling down their cheeks, and they looked way, way too skinny for an infant. Dave should have left then and there. It was a random baby abandoned in the street- so what? Plenty of babies were probably left out in the cold every goddamn day, left to go freeze or be eaten by stray dogs- Dave didn't need to get attached to the damn thing, especially since he was fucking sixteen. He didn't know the first thing about babies, especially if he wanted to take care of it before CPS or someone came. Hell, he would have probably ended up scarring the poor kid for life even by being around them for a day. If they even had one.

Babies may have been left out every day, but it wasn't every day that Dave found one of them out on one of the few days when the temperature got below thirty degrees. It wasn't every day he found himself face to face with a screaming bundle of grey with light hair and tears freezing to its face. Against his better judgement, he bent down and picked the bundle up, awkwardly trying to cradle it to his chest and rocking in a short staccato, not even sure what the hell he was doing.

Fuck. It dawned on him in that moment when the baby's cries started to subside into something a little quieter, a whimper like a kicked fucking puppy, that he couldn't go back home like this. Who knows what Bro would...

He clutched the infant to his chest, staring down at it like it was some alien possessing his body through his arms like some goddamn b-movie bullshit, and decided that before anything, he needed to warm this little guy up. Then, fuck, he could try and figure out where to go from there. Dave turned back towards the mouth of the alley, woodenly walking out, and rushed towards where he could see the nearest store. Some kind of coffee shop, he thought as he blindly rushed in the direction of it. What a goddamn sight. Dave Strider, stoic Strider badass, clutching a baby to his chest in his awkwardly lanky arms and trying to soothe it, mumbling raps at it under his breath. Fuck. He was in over his head.

Just outside the place, to add insult to what already would have been fucking horrible, he nearly crashed into someone. Dave was closer to dropping the screaming infant in his grip in surprise than he would have wanted to admit, and he winced as the bundle squirmed weakly and then started to bawl anew. He tried to stumble out apologies, trying to get around the figure. "Fuck, fuck, sorry, I just need to get to..."


	26. Karkat: Dig Up Your Own Corpse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in late 2016.
> 
> TW: Death, grave robbery, body snatching, possession.... basically a lot of spooky shit jghvbvj

Fuck him, he never thought that he'd be thinking 'thank god they didn't check around before locking me in this shitty place', but here he was, thinking that, not even in his right body and having gotten lost in a cemetery he didn't even know his family had planned to bury him in.

Even that previous thought wasn't a good one, and he let out a sigh as he hauled a shovel after him. Thank God he'd gotten in his right mind sooner rather than later, or else this entire grave robbing business would have been futile, what with years passing. After he'd managed to snag this still almost warm flesh suit, he'd been able to check the date- it'd only been a year. A year spent ambling around the mist, way too many legs growing out of his gooey, fleshy body like a pellucid centipede straight from the nightmares of some poor tormented kid with one of Beelzebub's more uninspired devils haunting their fucking dreams like he was just waiting for its bag of gold at the end of the week. A year consuming way too many gross, fleshy animals and birds and meticulously adding to his collection until, when he'd laid down in the woods to die a second time, he left a veritable graveyard behind him.

He had to admit, though, once he'd figured out which bones went to which skeletons- it was easier to go sneaking around when everybody thought that you were a crow, or a cat. It became even easier once he found that poor dead woman in a ditch. People answered his questions, if he played the part right, and luckily for him he seemed to do well enough. If third time was the charm, then that apparently applied to third lives too, and now he had the charm enough to figure out where he was buried.

He'd read, in one library with a bastard who wouldn't stop eyeing him until his hair had accidentally gone dark red with anger, that human corpses in coffins took many years to decompose completely, which was fucking peachy for him because that meant that if he could dig up his body, he could consume all the flesh off of it and keep the bones so that maybe he could try returning to some sense of normalcy. As normal someone who everyone knew was dead could be, at least- but fuck, having his own body back would be way better than having to switch from cat to crow to random dead people and back again, that was for damn sure.

Now, after months of searching, he found where his body was. Too bad Karkat hadn't gotten the memo on where the fuck his family put his fleshy bits. But then again, what the hell would he have expected? For his dad to give a warm reception to some random blonde girl who showed up on his doorstep and asked about his dead son? Where said dead son was *buried*, no less, when it was obvious that his new forty year old form couldn't be anything more than a professor, at most, for him? To roll out the red carpet and hand Karkat a glass bound book of sacred letterings showing the way?

Finally, though, he found the headstone with his name. Karkat almost didn't recognize it, hidden between a large cracked statue of an angel and the shade of a tree.

Damn, was it surreal to be looking at your own gravestone.

But he didn't know any other Karkat Vantases in this town, at least not one who died at age twenty, so he took the shovel to the soil and started to dig. He hadn't been used to labor when he was alive- he was in a university, being scholarly and occasionally going out to drink or be at the beach alone. The most he had as a job was transcribing for someone who couldn't read Spanish, or maybe that one time when he helped out at the church to set things up. Fuck, that entire life seemed so goddamn long from then. He could barely even remember what the hell he looked like, but he figured that he would figure it out once he got a hold on his bones.

He was making good headway, after a while- this body was somewhat more athletic than he was, and she must have been used to heavy lifting at one point, because it sure as hell helped him as he was clearing away the dirt. Karkat shoved the tool into the ground over and over, taking huffing breaths as he threw dirt over his shoulder. No one was patrolling the place, which was a blessing- that meant that he had time to himself to finish without the police getting there. If he could get his body, he could get the hell out of dodge without consequence- all the police would find is a woman's clean bones.

He was about three feet deep, heart hammering in his chest faster and faster from pure excitement because fuck, after this crazy supernatural shit he was getting his body back, when he heard the sound of a twig snapping. He tensed, hair slowly going white from the roots to the tips as he let the shovel fall to the ground. Fuck, Karkat wondered who in their right mind went to the cemetery this time of night before moving to hide behind the tree.

He couldn't let them see, at least, not unless he could scare them away.

**This is based in large part off of Mistborn's version of shapeshifters, but I really do like the idea of a ghost trying to get their old body back- so I'm gonna make that into an original story!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you're probably sick of seeing this update, but it's not over just yet. There's 18 more to go- I'm just too tired to continue tonight jhfvufvbj... Sorry for this being up front for so long!


	27. Dirk: Be the Literal Prince of Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016. No I had not, and still have not, read Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Dirk had thought that this entire trope of the new kid in school being shown off by overzealous parents and subsequently being too embarrassed to do anything other than consider the merits of stuffing their heads in a microwave died in the 90s for a reason. Unfortunately, time apparently didn't exist in the same way for Gods, so now here he was, a duffel bag over his shoulder and his eyes pointedly looking to the archway above to ignore how his mother was practically gushing about how 'clever and talented' her son was. Death would not come easily to him, he knew, but decapitation was sounding more and more like a better fate than this. At least as a severed head he could sit on a shelf and never be spoken about because it's literally too embarrassing to bring up anything about it.

He watched the teacher (or janitor? someone who worked here) wander away when his mother finally finished and let him go, reaching a hand up to rub the bridge of his nose. He should have asked for Hephaestus to take him instead. Sure the man limped and they'd have to go slowly, but he wouldn't stop literally every goddamn parent or teacher he thought might even interact with him and talk their ear off for minutes at a time. It was too late for that now, though, and soon the Goddess of love and beauty turned her attention back to Dirk, tapping one heeled foot on the ground. "Now, where the hell is that brother of mine?" Dirk had half a mind to ask which one it was.

Instead, he decided not to get the 'you should know what I'm talking about even though I didn't really explain it before' spiel and said, "Maybe he's got held up? I mean, it was a pretty long way here in the first place." They were on the outskirts of a fucking city, in what looked like a literal castle. There were spires reaching up towards the sky, and he thought maybe he could see a dragon or bird siren overhead. Hogwarts had nothing on this place- especially since it apparently was actually hidden from the human eye through some magical means or another.

Dirk's long since stopped questioning whenever magic is involved in something. It was just one of those natural deus ex machinas you never talked shit on- anything could be explained away by a spell or potion, and it wasn't as if he could sit there and go "well that stuff's kinda shitty" since his entire teaching up until now was one part spells and potion making. He'd thought that mostly fell in the realm of Hecate, but he'd also long since stopped questioning his mother in general. Especially since she was standing there, having changed appearances at least three times by now with the people who were passing. Make that four, because the next time Dirk looked at his mother, she actually looked like his mother, with long limbs and curled hair cascading everywhere.

He just sighed as she said, "He knows that this is important! Poseidon's coming with his girl, and even Hecate is coming up from the dark depths with her daughter! They know this is important for you all, being out here in the wide world- oh, do you have everything?" Dirk was about to protest that yes, he was fine, he had everything, when she bent a bit (fuck that was weird, she was literally five feet tall a few minutes ago) and took out her perfume. Oh. Oh fuck, no, he was not getting *that* perfume on his person, and he held up his hands placatingly while taking a step back.

"Hey, I have the atomizer you gave me- I really don't need *that*, okay? I'm here to hang out for a bit, not get swamped by people-" Thankfully, there were the footsteps of someone else coming. Hopefully they would provide enough distraction for his mother.


	28. Eridan: Be the Anime (the anime being Yuri!!! On Ice)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2016

Really, Eridan supposed that the beginning of the end was another won Grand Prix. It was a story from a Shakespearean tragedy- the tragic hero reaches his hands up towards the sun as if Icarus before him weren't on the same level, and then was shot straight down by the force of his own goddamn delirium. He wasn't shot down in the competition- absolutely everything went off without a hitch. His routine was technically flawless. His fans cheered and rejoiced and he stood on the ice with wreaths of flowers and praise.

Long Live the Ice Prince, he thought bitterly to himself as he stared down at another gold medal. He was the best. He was better than any of the small time shitstains on God's flowery bloomers that tried to challenge him for his crown, but what was the goddamn point? His coach chewed his ass out faster than after a night of drinks for even going a little off script, no matter how perfect it was; his fans asked for the same shit and fawned; business owners and dirty capitalists flocked to him to place him on a pedestal higher than their festering pus filled egos to promote a product. Everything repeated five times, the same shit over and over.

He was goddamn tired. He didn't say that often, because the day he actually admitted any kind of personal weakness was the day he took the blades on his skates and slit his own throat from pure shame of being melodramatic for no reason, but he was. Eridan was the top of everything, and now he was so high he could barely see the fucking ground anymore. Perhaps he was being dramatic, but it was true- it was in his nature, too, to bring drama, whether to the ice or to himself.

Just then he was putting on a pretty face for the reporters, answering questions and looking charming like the other four times. Yes, he hoped to one day find love. No, he would never leave the ice, he loved entertaining too much. Yes, he was sure to find something to surprise the world with, a new story to tell, next time. Then, he caught a flash from a particularly bright camera and just beyond that, spotted a familiar face. It was familiar for only one reason- of those who came to the Grand Prix to play among the big leagues, only one of them had fucked up so spectacularly. Honestly, Eridan had no idea how the kid even made it, if their skating was just gonna be that piss poor, but that bad of a failure could weigh on anyone. In part because he figured it was the least he could do (and in part because it'd look fucking fabulous on camera to be comforting a failure of a person, because hell, he may have lost something on the ice that day but it sure as fuck wasn't his vanity), he mimed signing an autograph. A kindly gesture from a genius.

Then the skater turned away and left. Eridan was left slightly indignant, too swarmed by random persons to properly show the extent of his umbrage. There some little small fry who floundered his way to the big leagues got the chance to meet him, veritable Royalty, and he was blown off! It was surprising, infuriating, and for someone who had gotten everything he wanted, it was almost a little fascinating.

But Eridan didn't have time to waste on thoughts about that- he was too busy figuring out a way to get away from the press, saying hurried goodbyes and looking over the crowd for a familiar face. Hell, he had a banquet to get to, didn't he? He couldn't be kept waiting here, or else he'd miss it!


	29. Pokestuck Rose: Lose Track of Your Kids* (*kids=Pokemon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written on the last day of 2016

Contests were always a sight to see, no matter the place, but Slateport seemed to have a certain... magic about it, she supposed. It could have been the charged atmosphere of people chattering in varying accents, talking about the contestants and saying the ones from their region were assured the victory. It could have been the cool fall breeze that made an otherwise unusually warm day somewhat bearable to walk in without having to load herself into a cocoon of fabric to hopefully metamorphose the proper tough skin for dealing with slightly chilly weather. Perhaps it was even the smell of food and the sight of colorful vendors that were profiting handsomely off such an event.

Too bad Rose was too busy rushing through a crowd of ladies in elaborate faux fur after her mischievous little shit of a pokemon to really pay attention to it.

She should have expected this, in letting her pokemon out for the morning so that they could see the sights alongside her. In retrospect, she probably should have seen this coming from the moment she had opened that box at sixteen and a tiny blue mouth screeched at her at the top of its little lungs. Her pokemon may as well have been her children, and much like a harried mother looking after two rambunctious toddlers, she knew that the odds of her having at least one troublemaker were high. Considering the fact that one of her very specific requests for pokemon had been a pokemon /known/ for turning out to be troublemakers, this was the inevitable aspect of letting the poor girl out with her. That Misdreavus always did have a penchant for finding people to spook.

That left Rose where she was now, apologizing quickly as she brushed past one overly crowded line, looking for a sign and spotting what she thought was a glimpse of her pokemon's hair, only to run into the red herring of a purple flag. Lovely. Asche meowed from where he had been weaving around her ankles, following her towards where she made her way to the main street where vendors were selling. Rose could have *sworn* that she saw Velvet fly over this way, and when everything was this dense, there was no doubt as to what that little rascal was up to.

It had become a problem, in the last few years, for the mischievous pokemon to sneak up on unsuspecting passersby and tug on them. She could be liable to tug on hair, clothing, jewelry, bag straps- just about anything hanging out in the air seemed to be fair game. Now Rose could probably just wait until the a trail of disgruntled tourists lead her right to her pokemon, like she normally would have done, but that day she had a bit of a schedule to maintain, what with wanting to speak to some of the contestants and get a good seat. Too bad Velvet never chose to do this at more convenient times. She scanned the line of people stretching from one kiosk and sighed.

The crowd was large as all hell, and it would be easy to lose a rather normal sized adult in here, never mind a tiny Glameow or a slightly bigger bundle of beads and mischief. It could take hours of navigating through an eternally undulating mass of flesh bodies after every flash of purple and dark blue... And just as Rose had paused, trying to think up another plan, as if fate had willed it, there came a sudden shout, and a flash of blue. That little shit. She got a victim.

Rose rushed towards the noise, Asche following at her heels as she caught sight of the little floating creature. God, she was so close- All she needed was her pokeball and right at the moment she was digging into the black sling bag over her shoulder, she barrelled straight into someone. Rose teetered backwards a moment and caught her balance after what was probably more or less some comical display, and looked apologetically to the poor person that she'd just about nearly steamrolled with her lack of foresight. "My apologies- are you alright? And if you saw it, could you possibly point me into the direction of a fleeing ghost pokemon?"


	30. Jake and the Stars His Granny Left (Fantasystuck)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written at the start of 2017

Once, his grandmother had told him that she brewed stars in her cauldron because even the Gods needed a hand sometime.

It was an early memory that had assailed him then, rocking listlessly in a little boat against the unrelenting waves of the sea, but it was one that continued playing nonetheless as Jake drummed his fingers against the wood underneath him. He might have sat up, restlessly dipping his fingers into the water, using that to bide his time, but the charm he'd thrown into the calm ocean had a tendency to sometimes attract some of the nastier things, and the last thing he needed was a latent Vamprey to be awakened to ravenous blood lust by nibbling a little too hard on his fingertips.

The sun beating down on Jake from above mimicked the waves of heat rolling off the fire perfectly as his grandmother sat, one hand on a large hound's head and the other painting pictures in the still air out of smoke and dust. It had been a pass time, when Jake was quite little and not quite big enough to go on the grand adventures that he really craved without Becquerel to accompany him, to sit down by the fire on the rug of what his grandmother said used to be a bear, declare himself too grown for sleep and then proceed to be lulled by dancing figures made of shadows and the earthen floor to proper sleep. It was one of Grandma's favorite stories to tell- how she strung up stars hidden on Earth, ready to be plucked and placed in the sky.

"My memory fails me," She used used to say, twinkling eyes as bright and green as the leaves in the forest that they lived in. She always said that, but she never forgot. "but I remember a few places where I placed them." She told Jake about warm eyes the color of distant suns, about jewels shining cold with a desire to be placed with others, about flowers that glowed in the dark and rested on the vines that twined around nymphs and in the clouds that wreathed the heads of the wind. It never truly made a lick of sense to Jake, what with being around five years old and about as brick headed as a toddler could get, but she always finished it with, "Maybe one day, you'll do me a favor and string them up for me, so that you can help the Gods a smidgen too."

Jake hadn't even realized that he was dozing until he caught a flash of brilliant color above him, blocking out the sun, and thought that a star shouldn't have been that close during the day.

Jake squinted up against the sunlight that suddenly invaded his eyes and tried to see if he was looking clearly. Was that- it seemed to be. There was something up there, and Jake had no goddamn clue what it could have been because his eyes were absolute shit from both natural unluckiness and sleep. Perhaps untying the boat and going out on a fishing trip when he hadn't exactly gotten the best night's sleep wasn't the smartest idea, but like hell was Jake going to let a little feeling of being absolutely knackered to hell and back keep him from doing something he'd been planning for a week by that point.

Now, Jake usually tried to make it a habit to come out and fish. Ever since his specs got smashed during that small fire started by a misplaced see drake egg cured in sea foam, it had been hard to actually get a read on any prey out in the forest, and a hunter couldn't very well walk a foot away from a deer and kindly ask it if it could please hold still for one Gods fearing moment while he shot a few arrows into its side! He was able to trap some small things, sure, but setting up those traps took up what precious little time he had in the first place to pour over Grandma's tomes, actually practice the spells he knew by heart, or even take some leisure time for himself.

Sometimes it was easier just to grab a net, cast a charm into the water, and hope that drake egg's mother wasn't there to recognize him. That had honestly been somewhat of a fear for a while now, but he was getting through it fairly well, which was at least one thing to be chipper about!

And now look at him. He was letting his mind wander like a horde of locusts had decided to ravish the crops in his head and he'd nearly missed that ludicrous fight that was happening up above! His eyes would opened wider, and he might have stood up if not for the facts that 1) his sight was still tragically and utterly screwed, and 2) standing in a boat on a tumultuous sea when a sea drake that could still very well recognize him was /not/ a good idea.

So instead of doing either of those things, he allowed himself to feel some disappointment as he reached one tan hand for the net, trying to see how many he bagged so that he could get the ever loving hell out of dodge. Then, there was one wet /smack/ of something ascending from (or falling into?) the water behind him, forceful enough to make their presence known but with not enough splash to tell Jake where in blazes it had come from or gone. There were very few things that someone with disadvantaged sight ought to do when out on the open sea and face to face with possible creatures, people, or even one of those damned sea drakes, but Jake was surprised enough to yelp and nearly drop his net.

He held onto the woven rope in his hands tightly and disregarded every single rule of what someone ought to do, impulsively turning his head and shouting back, "Who's there?! Whatever you are, show yourself!"

**I really do adore the set up I have here, and will more likely than not be using it for an original novel**


	31. Karkat: Somehow Be the Town Villain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017- originally as a Lazytown au, then as an ambiguous one

Mother of fuck, this was one hell of a situation that Karkat had gotten himself tangled up in, but it was done and now there was no getting out. Usually whenever some normal, sane person was confronted with a similar situation, they would try their best to dig their way out of the hole they were in, even if that meant digging themselves deeper and deeper until they either made it out on the other side to China or were burnt to a merciful crisp in the molten center of the Earth. Karkat, who had long ago given up on the idea of ever reacting to things normally because life seemed intent on screwing him over and he had been infected with a potent mix of learned 'fuck-all' attitude and Pavlovian disdain for giving a damn, figured fuck it, he'd just go with it.

So what was the problem, some naive little shithead might ask? Well that would be simple- he somehow accidentally became the town villain.

Karkat Vantas, lifelong resident of the sleepy little seaside town, just wanted some peace and goddamn quiet. Was it so hard to ask that the ironically active residents of the town shut their shit down for like five seconds so that he could read, or nap, or do literally anything other than have 'friendly' neighbors knock at his damn door? What was this town's obsession with it?!

It all began innocently enough, with rumors. People thought that Karkat was just lazy, never actually seeing the fact that he rather liked dancing and liked messing around with his sickles. Then kids started saying that all Karkat ate was cake and ice cream, which while guilty pleasures he often did stuff down his gullet when reading a particularly emotionally taxing scene, weren't his only source of sustenance. Then they decided that the soundproof rooms in his hive were so that no one could hear about all the machines that he was building, and okay, that may have been the point when Karkat realized this shit had gone absolutely pear shaped, but it kept some more annoying people off his back so he didn't question it. Teens whispered that he spent all day sharpening his knives and baking people into pies, which wasn't even that goddamn creative, considering that was the entire plot of Sweeney Todd. Also, he wasn't doing that shit. He just kept to himself and took online classes, mostly.

Somehow, through some series of events which likely would have been humorous to explain in a story or show in a montage filled with shitty edits and 'The Eye of the Tiger' overlayed, Karkat had actually ended up in the middle of town at fuck all in the morning the night before with a crateful of goodies that he'd spent actual effort on making. It wasn't any villainous act- one of his few friends in town was having a birthday, and after he got done baking he realized that he made way too much, and his stomach was basically putting the Ringling Brothers to shame with the acrobatics it performed, so Karkat figured, fuck it. Maybe he would actually do something nice, all by himself out of the goodness of his own black void where a heart probably shriveled up and died long ago, like the other charitable residents of the town. 

It wasn't until the morning, when he sat out on the porch with a mug of overly sweetened bean nonsense and some sugary cereal, that he realized that there were no early morning joggers or rambunctious fucks running all over the place.

It was a quiet, lazy morning. No neighbors nosing their way onto his porch, no kids running around- nothing.

That brought him to the present, at about three in the afternoon, getting the latest banging on his front door. Apparently, his friends were hearing rumors about how he'd given every resident in town a tummyache with his overly fattening baked goods, and about how some kids in the town legitimately thought that he was a super villain about to warm up to some good old fashioned evil. Evil, as in giving more obviously poisonous cupcakes and shit. This was the life he lived.

Karkat groaned to himself, and considered the merits of renovating the basement with actual soundproofing so that he could have some damn privacy, and earmarked his place in his book. The sweet, tender tale of Melana and her lovely slow burn romance with her best friend Micele would have to wait until he dealt with this little nuisance. Uncaring of the fact that his hair was still a mess (hadn't gotten around to trying to tame the wild rat's nest of curls yet- that in itself burned through at least an hour a day) and of the fact that he was still in pajamas (fuck it, he wasn't insane, he liked having lazy days from time to time), he stomped over to the front door and flung it open.

Uncaring of if it was a human or troll, an adult or child, the troll growled, squinting against the light and saying a gruff little, "What in the fuck do you want."


	32. Vriska: Sing, you Devil of Music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017

"What the hell do you /mean/ I'm not the main lead?!"

The courier cowered back away from all five foot one of Vriska Serket, eyes flashing with some fear at the outburst. It wouldn't have been the first time that some cheeky little shit in a monkey suit got knocked down a few pegs with the fire that habitually settled in her chest due to the fact that absolutely everyone had to make everything inconvenient, and had this been any other time, Vriska might have taken a moment to laugh at the poor prick. As it stood now, she had another good use for those powerful lungs of hers- chewing the messenger out so the maybe he'd do the shooting for her.

"I-I don't know what else you would want me to say, Miss Vriska-" He stammered out, tongue flicking all over the place stupidly in his goddamn mouth. All that served to do was make Vriska angrier, and anyone could tell about the fact that an angry bull in a red painted china shop didn't hold a candle up to the fury of Vriska Serket when she didn't get her way. She'd clawed her way up to the top of this goddamn troupe with nothing but raw talent and determination (and a few well placed bottles of vinegar shoved down her competition's throats). She had legions of fans calling for her to perform daily, selling out seats and boxes to hear her soprano, coming in from miles around. And this was the thanks she fucking got? Getting ousted by some random floozy with no talent and a part as the silent lover? The /silent/ lover?!

Needless to say, Vriska was not fucking having it. "That's Miss /Serket/ to you! Now who the hell says I'm going to be silent? Who has the goddamn audacity to think that they can keep me out of it-"

"The Phantom, Miss Serket." came the interrupting whisper of the youth.

The Phantom. Oh yes, of course, the Phantom of the Opera- what a load of horseshit! No one even knew if the guy was a ghost willing to kill for the shows to go as he wanted, or just a sponsor in a fancy mask, but frankly, Vriska couldn't be assed to give a damn. She stood up from her seat, black hair falling wildly over her shoulders as she tensed, glaring at the courier. "The Phantom- you mean some random talentless hack paid off so that my boss doesn't have to say anything to my face!" Blue eyes flashed with anger as she rooted around her dresser for a moment.

"I- you don't understand; the Phantom is /real/, he- he-" The boy was looking paler by the minute, and Vriska didn't pay one iota of attention, grabbing her purse and a compact that doubled as something a little deadlier. She knew the stories of the older parts of the opera house- and even if there was no Phantom, who knew what kind of weirdos wandered back there.

"You are to report back to my /esteemed employers/ that they're going to change their mind about my casting or else this primadonna is gonna fly!" She was well known by then- if they didn't want her so badly, then she could go to another opera house (rare as those were nowadays) and get sweet with the owners there, make up some bullshit about how horrible her old employers were, and then bring her fame and fortune to other places. That was the worst case scenario though- she wanted to see if she could have her way into this show yet.

The messenger looked at her, alarmed, and asked hesitantly, "Yes- where are you going off to, Miss Serket?"

"I'm going to go see if I can find this Phantom of the Opera and give him a piece of my goddamn mind!"

She paid no attention to some whining concern of some nameless nobody and swept her way out of the room, moving hurriedly through the halls. This was one of the richer places in the city, and the owners maintained the place well- it was almost enough to fit her tastes, but honestly, it was lacking in some way pretty much everywhere. It was a damn lucky thing for them that they had Vriska, and there they were, spitting in her goddamn face!

The high vaulted ceilings continued, but the bright chandeliers and golden halls of the Prospit Theatre left off behind her as she strode her way into the more decrepit underbelly. Here renovations had begun and then stopped, and started again in some places, and Vriska had to play a game of chance to keep from stepping through breakable boards with her heels. In that regard, she was lucky. Thankfully, her luck had improved to the point where she was sure that she would be able to find the place where the Phantom was said to be fairly quickly. Then lo and behold, she did, because even when angry enough that her head felt like it was pulsing with rage she was still smart enough to find the big ass mirror at the end of the hall.

There might have been some ritual associated, like knock on the mirror or say a prayer or sing, but Vriska didn't give any ceremonies any mind. Instead, she shouted at the top of her lungs, lungs which routinely were enough to fill an entire room with operatic soprano over the sounds of the orchestra and other singers, "Hey, Phantom, if you're here- show yourself! Open up! Do something so that I can come and see you face to face you goddamn coward!" If he was even here.

**I'm just sorry that I never got to rp this... though honestly, isn't Phantom of the Opera in the public domain? I Could Make A Novel Out Of That**


	33. Karkat: Wake up in Hell (The Musical)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in January of 2017, a full year and some months before The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals debuted

Was it really too much for Karkat to ask the powers that be for a normal day? Was it really that much of a difficult task, for life to give him some reprieve from the shithole of an existence? To have even a moment's peace in a house full of obnoxious jackasses, a little time to not have to deal with his shitty night shift at Seven-Eleven servicing stoners and that guy up the street who claimed to see Mothman in the bathroom that didn't exist in the goddamn building in the first place? Or did life just have an inane fascination with taking him by the testicles and popping every festering cyst of a nuisance on the shitty epidermis of his life at once?

Karkat wasn't one to believe in higher beings, but after what just happened, he might have been willing to believe after all the assholery he'd just witnessed.

The day started out normally enough. His phone blared with an annoying pop tune (not uncommon, due to the aforementioned obnoxious roommates) that he immediately shut off before dragging himself out of bed. He accidentally turned on a boom box he had stuffed in his closet as a gift from someone and took out the annoyingly nostalgic sounding tape. He even got into the bathroom and got through brushing his teeth, taming his hair into something more presentable than the usual 'rat's nest in the middle of swooping season' look.

Then when he got into the kitchen, reaching up to grab the cereal, he was suddenly assaulted by two singing roommates. He should have known that some bullfuckery was afoot- it had been suspiciously quiet, and even though both sounded surprisingly good, this was still slightly out of place enough that it seemed like the type of thing they would do to get underneath Karkat's skin.

He bore through about a minute of cheesy lyrics about how both his roommate's were going to have an absolutely chipper fucking day (to a song apparently written by a high Randy Newman) while crunching loudly on spoonful after spoonful of artificial cinnamon flavored sugar stacks before finally snapping, asking the assholes to please shut the hell up with the song and let him eat in peace, dammit. There was the sound of a record scratch as both looked to him, and damn, they had gotten good at acting because they looked really fucking perplexed, before they shrugged and started singing again, this time with an accompanying track apparently coming from fuck all no where.

Karkat left the house, none the wiser to the hell that awaited him outside. At first, he didn't even realize it, walking along with his hands shoved into his hoodie pockets and a backpack thrown carelessly over his shoulder. It started innocently, with the guy in front of him humming and tapping his fingers against his leg. Not really anything weird- the dude had headphones in, and was probably just listening to something he liked. Then more people closed in around him, which was weird for this time of morning since not a lot of people signed up for an eight in the morning military literature class, and he heard *more* humming. along with the same tune.

Then one voice rose above the rest in a lilting alto and chaos happened.

There was the sound of a blues piano coming from absolutely no where, and a girl on his left lifted her eyes up to the bleak, cloudy sky and started singing. "The alarm goes off at seven/ and you have no tiiiiiime...." Karkat, who at that point must have still partially been in denial, still ignored it, until the end of her solo came. With the words, "Hungover and tired... and a million miles away~" Suddenly the invisible tune picked up and everyone around him suddenly came to life, throwing themselves simultaneously into a goddamn song. Karkat was thrown partially out of the way as a group of girls on his right twirled each other in time to something from- what, the twenties? It was 2017! And there were dozens of strangers in a flash mob on the street!

Somehow, he was able to escape the crowd without anyone noticing, and usually this would be the time to assure himself that he'd just been in a really weird coincidence and that this was just his shitty luck getting in the way. But then he looked around, and there was literally no one else. Anyone who had been walking by kept walking. No one was video taping this random fucking flash mob.

Then the number came to an end and everyone started towards the lecture hall again as if absolutely nothing happened.

Karkat had rubbed at his eyes, and then decided that it must have been the insomnia. He never slept well. He was shit at sleeping. His shitty sleep schedule must have been causing him to hallucinate. With that rationalization firmly in mind, he just so happened to notice a coffee shop not too far from the school buildings. Which was weird, because he'd been coming this way for a couple weeks and hadn't seen it, but. Fuck it. Maybe he was just too preoccupied with other shit to notice. Blindly, he moved towards the little, almost too pleasant seeming cafe.

Inside it was just as sweet and quiet as the outside. There were patrons there, chatting and sipping on coffee even in the early morning, and Karkat was assaulted with the heavy smells of baked goods and strong roasted coffee. His stomach grumbled, probably because in his haste to not go apeshit and throw his flipped fucks at his mental roommates, he'd only finished half of his cereal. For a moment, Karkat actually allowed himself to relax, with the saccharine atmosphere actually doing something to calm his shit after the strange, and weirdly very musical, morning that he'd been having so far.

He started towards the counter and was even thinking about other things when suddenly, gentle piano and acoustic accompaniment filled the air. He froze, though not for the same reason that everyone else around him seemed to freeze. Karkat looked to the left of him- absolutely no one moved, holding coffee and freezing mid keystroke, still as statues. Then he looked to his right- more of the same.

When he opened his mouth to ask "What the actual fuck is happening here?!", the only answer he got was the sound of someone moving. Only one other person could seem to move throughout this entire cafe, and fuck, this was deeply unsettling.

He looked desperately to that person, asking yet again, "Look, can you tell me what's going on?!"

**I had originally wanted to do something with this idea, but The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals beat me to the punch- which I view as a funny coincidence honestly!! Just goes to show you that if you don't write your ideas, someone will get to it one day first...**


	34. Kanaya: Deal with Generic Suburban White Mom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017

If this woman continued to pester her about a book that very obviously was not in stock, Kanaya thought privately to herself behind her all too kindly smile, she'd most likely be getting a twelve pack of dictionaries to the gut.

Now, Kanaya tended to think of herself as a fairly patient woman. She had a tendency to listen to her friends, no matter how insufferable they might have been (and no matter how much she may or may not have teased them throughout it) and no matter how ridiculous the situation might have been. She got through college while putting up with herself, who at the time had about as shitty a sense of time management as any harried college student with no prior engagement with academic environment on campus had, and she got through her teenage years with all the strange phases that went with it and were much better left forgotten.

With the lights having dimmed, though, and candles burning throughout her little shop setting the ambience for what was to be a new experience and with seven Oxford dictionaries weighing down her arms, Kanaya was much less forgiving of this customer chewing her out for the oh so horrific travesty of not carrying a novel that literally just came out earlier that day, in a genre that Kanaya didn't even order many books of. The highest bishops of the Catholic Church were surely weeping the tears manifested from the very highest points of heaven, acting as mortal manifestations of angels mourning the sudden challenge to this middle aged woman's entitlement. If her heart hadn't been so hardened and green with the obvious envy that this woman likely felt she commanded from others, Kanaya might have shed a lone tear down her dusty cheek, dripping softly onto the silk of her blouse and catching the candlelight in only the most dramatic of displays.

Unfortunately, Kanaya wasn't the lovely ingenue of her own story, nor did she dance through the dusty pages of an olden tale like so many of the heroines in books surrounding her, but at least she had her wits and several extremely heavy dictionaries if worse came to worst. Honestly, it had barely even touched upon the waters of 'worse' in the first place, even though she could hear the woman's resentment and arrogance echo the quick words she spoke out loud in as clear a bell. The woman said, "You don't even have an online catalog I could order from? Are you sure you haven't checked the back?" The woman thought, /Why in the hell did I even come here? Of course she doesn't have it. She must be stupid or mental. Who lights so many candles in a book shop anyhow?/

Kanaya wanted to tell the woman that the shop was perfectly sound even with all the candles, thank you very much, and perhaps she felt it necessary to actually give her little business some damn character. Unfortunately, she couldn't exactly address the attacks on her business, mostly because she was reading her mind, and it generally was fairly rude to indicate that one may or may not have been snooping around in someone's head. Even if it was mere accident, and even if much like the heroines in all the olden stories all around the room, she kind of stumbled into it headfirst most of the time.

"Why don't you come back in a few weeks?" She pleasantly told the woman, a gentle, inoffensive smile on her dark lips, "We'll be getting in an order soon, and by then I'll have everything up for sale. Many of the books in the next batch are newer." The woman huffed, and then turned on her heel to march out the front door of Kanaya's little book shop. The woman thought, /Fuck this./ Kanaya thought back spitefully, almost as if she could be heard as she heard the woman, /Bitch./

Sighing a bit and letting her facade fall, she put the dictionaries away and moved back to the counter, turning on the coffee machine. After all, tonight was a little special event, and she couldn't go to bed yet. Or really, at all. As the strong smell of some local coffee chain's brand started filling the air, mingling with the scents of vanilla and cinnamon coming from the candles, Kanaya moved to take one of the styrofoam cups so that she could have the first cup.

There was a reason why she needed caffeine; it was the same reason why the lights were dimmed, and the reason why she had spent so much time lighting scented candles and dusting even the top shelves of the large bookcases that raised up towards the ceiling- it was a midnight gathering that she was hosting. Or rather, it was technically a midnight sale where everything was magically seventy-five percent off until seven the next morning because in a capitalistic society such as theirs, it was always a good idea to have a gimmick, but even still, Kanaya couldn't help but be at least slightly excited.

While yes, fifty percent of why she thought this up was a business ploy, the other fifty was something akin to genuine excitement. Kanaya really did like meeting other people, even if some of them were the kind of asshole that she barely stand- depending on the person, their thoughts could be many things, from memories from their childhood or ramblings from class, and early in the morning when the witching hour seemed to blanket their little town in an air of mystery, it was impossible to tell what kind of thoughts could arise. All she needed to do was stay up.

She checked the time- five minutes to midnight. She poured some coffee in her shitty little cup and added only a dash of sugar and a drop of creamer, and moved to grab the little banner she'd embroidered for the occasion. Just as she was reaching down over the counter, long arm awkwardly sliding over the wooden top while the other held her coffee up and out so as to carefully not splash it everywhere, she heard the bell for the door ring.

**I'll be adapting this into a novella, along with the magic bakery and supernatural 7-11 ideas!!**


	35. The Fallen Star Called Kanaya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017

Everything was burning. Well, of course it would be burning, she told herself dryly as she was suspended, for a moment, in between solar systems and light years in a strange void where gravity had yet to snap her up- she literally burned. That was her nature.

Odd, how easy it was to forget that little detail, but considering the fact that she's falling light years away from old bonds of gravity and thought towards some greater unknown, she thought that it was all warranted, before the gravity of something pulling down on her deepest electrons tugged and ensnared her, throwing her once again into the throes of high velocity with nothing solid to cling to, a smattering of plasma the only thing keeping her together in a vaguely foggy mass. It was all disordered, all painful, and burning in a way that went beyond simple fusion in her core generating thoughts and heat energy. Kanaya no longer had a core, anyway, nor a star.

The fall was worse than anything she had expected, but really, how could she have expected it? How could she have known that the bonds would have been severed, that some ugly thing with barbed, matter destroying tendrils would chop through the vein connecting Her and Her Star, something inseparable, and how was she supposed to react to the beings of blackness with invisible tails and bright white markings in places that look far too much like the black holed banshees whispered about with holes through their core cavity? She couldn't do anything, with being thrown into the gravity of some star system light years away, hearing the distant dissonant howls and wails of banshees warning burn out and supernova and holes through one's body and the hissing spittle of creatures that melted atoms to things like themselves.

Kanaya arrived in this new solar system, with far too many little pets around it for such a small star. Nine planets, on one star? Had it been any other circumstance she might have entertained herself with the thought of someone being that much of a planet fiend and maybe have attempted to befriend them, but now everything was overwhelming. They were speaking to her, the being in this star, clicking and trilling and trying to reassure her that the worst was over, but it was a lie. A stardust covered newborn bare lie.

New gravity hooked onto her, pulling her straight down into the atmosphere of one of the planets as she heard a song of knowledge, and perhaps Kanaya might have listened if not for the oppressive feeling of condensing. Everything was burning, faster now, ramping up in tempo to the point where she could barely handle the beat pulsing in her every molecule because of how dense it all was. Her more comfortable gaseous state was turning into a vicious mist, but that mist was just becoming smaller and smaller and Kanaya was in agony as she could feel a physical body being crafted for her, out of her mind. Her thoughts buzzed through every piece of her, and she could feel the burning returning as she plummeted to the rocky surface below.

For a moment, Kanaya lost consciousness, lost in fire, song, and the shrill scream ringing through the air.

When she came to, she could feel solid material underneath her. Was it natural or not? For a moment, she couldn't tell whether it was organic or something else. Everything was so localized, so brought down to the point of some singularity that it was hard to hear anything over the hum of her every thought and the vibration in her particles. Then, she heard the gentle coaxing of a song, urging her to just try and follow instructions. What other choice did Kanaya have but to follow?

She rearranged herself smaller and smaller, feeling far too little and insignificant, but what could she do? Kanaya had been thrown away, torn from her core, and now she had to pick up the pieces, solidifying her liquid form into something more solid and long in shape. She was quickly told about different parts to make for herself- eyes to let her 'see' through two little organs on a small part of her front, 'hands' to help maneuver her physical body. She opened her eyes for the first time and saw the universe overhead, and once her ears had opened up as well, she could hear the solid, strangely vibrating sound of something coming.

Plasma disks and dredges, Kanaya cursed to herself, voice sounding foreign and shrill in her 'mouth'. She was still speaking her tongue, but it was less piercing- slightly annoying, really. She just barely kept her newly formed fingers from melting into the rest of her body as she looked out of the edge of the crater to see just what in the darkest reaches of anti-matter caverns could be coming.

/"Who and what is there?"/ is what she meant. A low growl with a harmonious trill was what left her mouth.

**Eventually became the basis of my original short story,[Lilith in Starlight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18511228). I really do want to adapt it into a full length affair, though- after I get a grasp on quantum physics, of course, haha**


	36. Dirk: Lament, Shakespearean Style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017

There's a lot of shit he could do, no matter how much of his general self loathing and Murphy's Law fucking him from behind with no lube tried to tell him. Dirk knew that he was a sight, vanity and the general looks gotten from women he wasn't interested in and men he was damn right interested in jacking his shitty ego up to eleven, full purr, engine rumbling as he preened himself like the majestic bird his hair took the form of. He knew he was a damn sight with his hands too, and even if he couldn't tell someone the smallest idiosyncrasies between Lesbian Gothic Victorian and Lesbian Gothic American literature he could sure as hell find his way around a circuit board, into the general grey reaches of morality where he may or may not have constantly tread with a couple of his inventions and he was starting to get the hang of hyperbolic geometry with a quick stride. If he wanted to, Dirk could even find the thirty seven layers of irony in the previous paragraph of thoughtful word avalanche barreling around his skull with little imagined pin ball machine pings every time they hit bone.

But one thing Dirk Strider couldn't do was tell his friends 'no', especially not when they got especially pouty and he figured that fuck it, he had nothing better to do.

Normally before he gave the go-ahead, he would have at least struggled for a good day or two, tried to parse out every possible word combination that could result in the desired result via analyzing connotations and trying to figure out how to use said connotative words in a way that wasn't liable to get his gut squirming because he was being a manipulative horse's ass, and then he'd get another little pouty look or 'pretty please' and a neat little pile of reasons why he needed to get his ass in gear and actually do something 'outside' his little cube of coding and welding and sleep deprivation, and he would spend all the time he had on hand up to the event kicking himself in the goddamn shin for being such a pushover when it came to things that meant more social interaction and affection.

This time Dirk wasn't too harsh on himself when he took a few moments less than usual to agree; hell, it wasn't exactly anything bad. It wasn't exactly a harebrained scheme, so there was no need to go flipping his fucking wig out over it. All it was was auditions for this little Shakespeare Festival the Drama Club was putting on- they were doing five plays all in one day, all with festivities and miniature performances on the outside for the student masses looking to get drunk or play a few shitty overpriced games to distract from their shitty overpriced educations for more than a couple of hours. 

They were just auditions, and Dirk had told himself that he couldn't possibly get cast in anything. He could act, sure, but there had to be more people looking to crawl out of the woodwork, snapping in unison as their time to collectively have a pretentious jerk-off over what possibly is the most ironically common playwright came so that they could show their prowess in finding the true meaning of every dick joke made to impress a few of the uninformed masses. Or perhaps a few of them were dragged there like Dirk had been. Hard to say, when really Dirk was so far out of the realm of giving a single shit that he had ascended to a separate plane of existence and sat calculating code in the back of his head while reading lines with as much power as he could muster for Macbeth, then Hamlet. Of course, they had to pick three tragedies and then two comedies, but Dirk honestly hadn't paid attention to what those comedies were. It wasn't until days later when he would realize what a horrific, tremendous miscalculation he'd made with the beep of an email getting to him.

He had been under the assumption that the directors wouldn't be crossing genres here and making some disturbing cross bred infant of a show by putting actors in places where they sure as fuck didn't belong, if they even picked Dirk to do anything in the first place, but he was sorely mistaken with the cheerful line of text from the head of the club. "Congratulations, Dirk Strider- we are elated to inform you that you've been cast in the role of Puck in A Midsummer's Night Dream!" greeted him along with the times when rehearsals would start. It was in that moment, wrench clattering onto the floor with surprise as a couple wires short circuited in his brain, that he realized he fucked up.

Worse- Dirk had made a damn promise to be in this sideshow if he somehow got a part. Explaining the severity of this entire situation was going to be hell, he knew. He lamented this to the pits of hell that resided underneath the level specifically designated to the ignorant who wanted to skydive into Satan's asscrack under the guise of godliness as he made his way to his first rehearsal, and before he could overthink this and try to back himself out of a corner he hadn't even been backed into yet, he texted the last person he'd talked to, mostly since they were the most readily available to hear the full brunt of this bullshit.

TT: At risk of sounding cliche, Houston, we have a problem.  
TT: I know I say this as if I'm not up to my ass in problems all the time no matter where I end up, but today's problem is worth the cliche I think.  
TT: As it turns out, I got casted in this Shakespearean thing.  
TT: And the role I got is, to put it lightly, about as fitting as the sea level lowering at the climax of an apocalypse movie to reveal that the protagonists were just paranoid the entire time.


	37. (Genius StriLonde au) Dirk: Let Things Get Out of Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017, on the same day as the other 3 Genius Strilonde au prompts

It had been forty-eight hours, seventeen minutes and thirty-one-two-three seconds and counting since Dirk had actually allowed himself the luxury of a bed, and while he knew in a currently distant, abstract way that he was irreparably fucking himself over and precipitating his inevitable downfall into "trying to kill yourself and your niece with your own invention if it doesn't work" levels of mental torment, the crash and burn that would come after this was distant from the forefront of his mind. 

It was just a fact of life at this point- Dirk would be on the cusp of some new advancement, his workers would watch on with increasingly dark circles under their eyes as they took shifts making sure he didn't impale himself on a stray bit of scrap metal, coffee and the increasingly sour smell of human and maybe animal hair wafting from their skin or maybe masked by perfume, trying to appear to be of help. They weren't, not really- but that was because Dirk's need to be in control like a jackass tended to take over about this time. Then he eventually found his solution, finished the project, and crashed back on his couch at home and tore his hair out because while trying to sleep his mind just would not shut down to let him recharge. 

Today was no different- Dirk lay surrounded by scrap pieces and twenty different blueprints which may as well have been calligraphed onto the insides of his eyelids by that point, with ten different muses banging pots and pans over his head. They didn't get any sleep because of his insipid one in the morning bitching and drafting and now he wasn't getting any reprieve because of them. Just another inevitability, another previously decided fact of life, and one that eventually led him to where he was now- putting the finishing touches on a complex robotic arm, fitting skin lined with delicate electrode sensors over the metallic skeletal digits. 

They watched while he worked, mind whirring with the challenge because machines didn't have natural cues or behaviors to pick apart or overanalyze like the one man fandom of humanity; they had preprogrammed directives, linear paths and simple circuitry, and that was all there was to it. He'd never been as good with people as his other siblings were, and that was just another fact. He supposed now the cliche of the jealous brother could come into play, and no doubt some of his bullshit was definitely maybe subconsciously because of some internalization, but that shit was fucking stupid.

In fact, he wasn't entirely sure why he veered off topic in the first place, because in that moment he finished. Maybe somewhere in the depths of the whirring bullshit that was his faulty head, the wires for 'death' and 'completing a project' got crossed there, because Dirk was pretty sure that he just saw his life flash before his eyes slightly. Which really didn't make any sense, since he'd just been staring at this arm for twenty-seven seconds, hearing the bated breath of his coworkers behind him. Reaching a hand up to his shades, he switched them on, surveying the project so that Hal could have a good gander at it. "Congratulations, Dr. Frankenstein." Hal's voice (which is to say, Dirk's voice pitched down slightly because Hal was still a little shit who couldn't come to terms with the idea of sounding more 'immature' than Dirk) crackled over the shades, "Looks like you dug this one up fresh from the grave. Just look at that pallor- once this gets on the internet, the fundamentalists will flip the fuck out for sure."

"Yeah, yeah, ethics," Dirk had long come to terms with the reality of his amorality here- that entire shitfest had sailed years ago while he was still in high school and preoccupied with the entire bullshit good and evil dichotomy that, he supposed, always marked him as a little more simple than Rose or Roxy or even Dave. "It's all mechanical though, and cheaply made, so if you can drop the pop cultural bullshit and give this thing a wiggle that'd be aces dude." 

"My entire existence is a pop culture reference," Hal snarked as he wirelessly connected to the limb. "I mean, you named me Hal. Did you forget all of your childhood obsession with 2001: A Space Odyssey? Considering that, I figured that you might have tried doing something original instead of improving prosthetic shit. Like make something else of me, or-" 

"Hal, not now." Dirk intoned dryly, "Save all that for later and just move the damn arm."

The arm gave a jump, and then its fingers clenched. While this wasn't exactly the first project Dirk would have jumped on (it was a commission for Rose, for some kind of scheme of hers) it was still gratifying as all hell to see the thing move, and not in some jerky, unnatural way either. It'd taken a whole lot of prototyping to get to the point where each machine part worked together like human bones, and it'd taken more than enough time to make those sensors out of something cheap and widespread. His team gave a round of applause, vigorous and proud, and when Dirk turned to look he could just tell the plans of some of them- one with a wide smile, pupils dilated by fifty percent, the lingering scent of perfume likely was ready to go home to her wife, while another with a tired smile wanted what Dirk was dreading- sleep.

Then, there was a little mechanical sounding jolt behind him, and he whipped his head back around. From its metal bindings, the arm moved, and then dropped the crushed pieces to the table. Then Hal, the little bastard, made the arm jump away and scuttle along the damn floor like a spider, rushing out the carelessly open door of the room. Goddammit, Dirk should have known this would happen- Hal was him-fucking-self, and if he were a floating consciousness with nothing to do all day and stuck with the maturity of a newly christened teenager not yet free from the bindings of their horrific middle school phase of choice he would do some shit like this too just because he could.

Cursing, he rushed out after the arm and into the rest of the hospital he had temporarily set up shop in, a couple of his coworkers trying to manually disable the wireless connection on the hand by overriding it. Dirk knew it was a fruitless gesture. Hal probably already had hacked the thing, and even though he and Dirk weren't on par with Roxy- /no one/ was on par with Roxy- it was probably still far too advanced for even the doctors and mechanics and engineers gathered in that room. He'd have to just catch that arm and manually turn it off himself.

Hal, of course, was laughing in his ears the entire way, and the humor of everything wasn't lost on Dirk- here was some asshole with laughing shades, chasing what at first glance looked like Frankenstein was holed up here somewhere, through a hospital where patients possibly about to undergo surgery would inevitably see him chasing said arm. Objectively, it was fucking hilarious. While Dirk was there, though, having to be the one chasing down this thing, it was far less funny and more grating than Adam Sandler's newest attempt at butchering the audience's bowels with his trite form of humor, and just about as cliche too. Hal really needed to find some new material if he was going to get Dirk to say anything.

Just as Dirk was catching up with the damn fast thing (why did he make it that fast? maybe somewhere around hour thirty-three he just lost all his damn sense) when he crashed into someone, stumbling back a bit because the lack of sleep and surprise culminated in a general lack of coordination. He caught himself though (keep your left leg on the ground, press down and rise up) and he looked to the person he ran into, quickly apologizing somewhat insincerely and asking, "Did you happen to see a severed arm running by?"


	38. (Genius StriLonde au) Rose: Play an Unassuming Role in the American Government

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017, on the same day as the other 3 genius StriLonde prompts

"Yes, yes, I'm aware of whoring I'll be doing here," Rose said dryly into the phone, reading over her notes from the press conference. "because this is politics. The government is a brothel filled to the brim with harlots, and this is a fact I will lament silently behind my quivering, painted lips, mascara hanging thick upon my lashes and threatening to run. Why are you calling me again?" Dave seemed to have impeccable timing when it came to finding the most inconvenient times to pester her when she very kindly waited until he was free (which he often was, fucking around as he did) to do her own frivolous displays of kidnapping him with the help of government aides and the like, and Rose did not care for that shit at all. 

Currently she was standing in front of the boudoir of the lavish hotel room she was currently staying in due to the generous donations of lobbyists attempting to get in her good spirits. Normally she would have scoffed at the notion of taking such obvious bribes and changing anything because of it, but this time around, Rose had other plans. Plans involving a possible overhaul of the entire healthcare system, should she play her cards right, and with contributions from herself and these "anonymous" sponsors, she figured that she might be able to sway a few Republicans yet. She poked one diamond earring through her free ear, listening as Dave prattled on about nothing, and then said, "Well, I better let you go now sis- you got someone at the door and it'd be shitty of me to keep your date waiting because the velvety sound of your voice gave you incest fantasies."

"Incest, you say? Now, why would you ask that if it's obvious I'm a lesbian?" She waited for a few moments and after some near silent sputtering, the line went dead. Just as predicted, although perhaps a few minutes too early, there was a knock at the door. Checking her makeup again, Rose made sure she looked as the public needed to see her- pretty, calm, in control and as if she wouldn't completely overturn an entire facet of the economy from behind the scenes. 

To herself and her siblings, she was Rose, a little shit of a sister who sometimes did things to fund projects or keep them afloat because of familial obligation and a deep seated, damnable fondness for her siblings, despite them all being shits- to the rest of the world, she was Rose Lalonde, an unassuming Civil Service employee in the State department with completely innocuous ties to the Secretary of State, FBI and a little over half of the Presidential Cabinet. This was a party that she had to go to, flying all the way out to DC to take the arm of a senator as his "date" and give her thoughts on the state of healthcare in the country, and whether it would be viable to put in place universal healthcare. Foreign dignitaries of all kinds were there, and if Rose knew anything, it was how to pressure others with seemingly hard evidence and support from others.

There Rose stood, her arm clasped in the older man's as she worked her charms. The way to the party had been boring and lackluster, the only interesting thing catching her attention was the good senator's wedding ring, taken off as he entered the party- clean on the inside, dirty without, showing a lack of care in cleaning despite the twinkling interior suggesting he took it off often. What other signs did she spot? Touches lingering too long, eyes wandering to pretty women or catching on especially handsome young men in suits, an easy smile and laugh that dripped with charisma- cheater, most definitely, likely looking for an affair or currently having one. Rose carefully filed that knowledge away for just in case. 

The party was in full swing when they arrived, lobbyists and politicians speaking to one another over brimming flutes of champagne. Rose asked for a water (hiding a grimace, begone cruel memory, show not the ills of the past) and eased into several conversations, hearing what could be heard. 

Again people complained about the costs they could experience with national healthcare replacing all other privately owned businesses, how even offering a government owned health insurance was a step towards socialism like in Communist Russia (there was no dissuading the more radical of them that socialism wasn't communism even if communism was a form of socialism, so she didn't even try) as some heads of companies wheedled themselves into the talk, proclaiming that they would have to make prices sky rocket should national insurance take hold. 

"An odd assumption," Rose said easily, head tilting to the side with careful confusion. She was still young, still pretty, and these men in particular were boastful and stroking their egos would eventually make it blow back into their faces. Rose loved nothing more than to watch men like these crash and burn. "Considering that recently there has been advancements in things such as, say, prosthetics. I happen to know for a fact that a team recently found a way to make a hyperrealistic arm that may as well just be a laboratory made piece of flesh and bone- why would prices skyrocket for consumers again?"

The lobbyists at her side, those anonymous sponsors from agencies such as "The Right to Health" and "Doctors of America", were able to jump in just as Rose finished her question, grilling the executives in question about hikes in prices if the products are cheaper, and why on earth would healthcare for everyone change that? Rose watched on in amusement as the little side show began, sipping at her water and staying silent while gathering information about each and every executive. Another cheater, one likely dabbling in less than legal things if the long sleeves, pockmarks on his wrist and arms, pallor and jerky, nervous way of moving had anything to say, a third speaking from some kind of script with stilted speech and circular talk- all was filed away, and soon enough she would have other agencies find more information on them, enough to expose them in three weeks time to expose their scandalous way of thinking.

Of course, she knew going into this profession that everything was going to end up slow as molasses, but even a little step went a long way. Even though she was internally bemoaning the amount of paperwork she would have to slough through before it killed her under its immense paper weight or cut her to ribbons via slow, painful cuts on the surface of every part of her body, she still waited and watched, holding her tongue. It had been a skill that had taken woefully long to master- with as silvery a tongue as hers, it was hard not to open up and cut into everything her verbiage came in contact with- but master it she did anyway, despite the fact that there was a perfect opportunity to interject her garnish of snark when one of the slowly roasted executives let out a particularly spicy remark, implicating them in a scandal about embezzling funds from charities that Rose knew for a fact were severely corrupt and underfunded. Interesting.

As the conversation died down and Rose traded names and numbers, she excused herself to the ladies' room. Normally this was her cue to scurry to the bathroom and search on her phone any information, text aides and other workers to see just how much she could gather about a new politician or sponsor. Today, it was because she felt the telltale prick of eyes upon the back of her neck, hair standing on end, a primitive instinct reignited. She moved away from the group and the good senator, and the feeling was there, following in her footsteps.

Before this point, it had merely been mildly interesting- now, though, it seemed that things were about to get a hell of a lot more fun.

Stepping away from the main party, she glanced around herself and reached into her purse for her knitting needles- both a wonderful conversation starter and an unassuming weapon to hand some cocky miscreant's ass to them on a platter. Then, she said aloud, faux butter soft smile on her face, "Whomever happens to be there, why don't you come out? It's terribly rude to keep a lady waiting, you know."


	39. (Genius StriLonde au) Dave: Use The Second-Highest IQ On Earth for the Most Useless Shit Possible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017, along with the other 3

Man, today was going to be a good day. Maybe even a great one, with an exclamation point at the end and everything to convey just how much his insides were twisting up into knots from how fucking giddy he was. Instead, what did Dave get for attempting to have an emotion differing from an ice raft chilling at a cool zero degrees Kelvin on the frozen Antarctic sea state he totally was in all the time, because he was just that chill a motherfucker? He got a couple hairline fractures in his ribs (his right floating rib and a couple of his false ribs, fuck, those were he favorite kinds of ribs), a jolt straight to the first lumbar vertebrae and also a broken jar of formaldehyde fucking everywhere.

To be fair, that all was less from life fucking him up creek without any lube and more him fucking himself up like a kinky shit and trying to skateboard inside in the vicinity of his collection of dead things. He definitely figured that breaking something was a possibility- deduced it, in fact, as he took into account gravity and the general places of all his stuff and possible paths through it- but he figured that doing a sick fucking kick flip off the handle of this skateboard would more than make up for a broken jar. Instead now he was walking down the street, being careful not to twist around (damn hairline fractures- not serious enough to warrant a hospital visit, just painful enough to be laid up for about a month and a half to hate every single facet of his fucking existence and wishing more than ever for the warm embrace of the sun like the fucking trash he is) as he hobbled down the street, just mentally grousing about the fact that he wasn't gonna get to carbon date that T-Rex after all. Dammit, he'd been looking forward to seeing that giant reptile-bird skeleton.

Dave stepped over cracks and watched the slow trickle of college students around him as they trudged onto class or whatever restaurants they could find. It was always college students out this time of night- living close to a college campus usually guaranteed that shit the way watching Shyamalin's film was throwing yourself into the maw of a film so pretentious and sure of its artsy perfection that it was ironically going to be the best kind of film while being the worse, all at the same time on twenty different simultaneous alternate parallel universes of irony. Dave could see it now; two towering, interdimensional bubbles, swirling with light and dark bullshit like the shitty CGI of a Matrix rip off, brushing against each other at the point where Shyamalin exists, blurring existence to the point where good and evil "...got flipped, turned upside down and I'd like to take a minute so sit right there, I'll tell you how I became the Prince of Bel Air" - Shakespeare, probably.

Oh wow, another metaphor ran the fuck away from him faster than a politician from incriminating evidence. Where was he? Oh right, college students. Zombified looking fucks ambling around as the sun slowly went down, bags under their eyes and books under each arm. It must have been finals week- thank god Dave no longer had to slog through that hell on Earth. He may have been smart as hell, but he needed to still study some of the more intangible bullshit that Roxy had down pat, and asking her or Dirk for help would've been kinda fucking embarrassing since technically he was kind of the smartest of the four. Smarter than Roxy by like an IQ point, sure, and sure IQ tests were already bullshit but hey, them's the breaks. 

His phone dinged as Roxy sent him a text- "hey, what do you figure would cause fractures in a drowning victim? like one where there's no rocks or nothing to bang up against, just water. thanks for the help!" Must have been another mystery. It was good that at least his siblings figured out some good ways to use their heads- and thank god Roxy did the mysteries, because he didn't think he could handle the sight of the blood or gore or the thought of straight up murder.

So Dave texted back, "depends how high the victim fell from and like where the fractures are like if theres compression fractures and spinal shit that could be from hitting the water but if its anywhere else on the body theyd have to be thrown or hit up like a joint in the 20s selling more than bootleg shit" and with that caught sight on a student walking by with a cup of Starbucks, looking sweaty as they rushed the fuck away. Which was weird considering the fact that the Starbucks nearby closed, but then again it looked like they'd been running (and they were fit too, so it must have been somewhat far from the library) so- 

Oh hell yes. There was a new Starbucks. Time to head over to hipster central.

Dave legitimately could not think of a better way to use his powers of deduction. Robotics who? What politics? Doing some Sherlock Holmes shit? Hell nah, running like a cheap whore to rich men spotted down their alley towards the newest overpriced coffee shit was the real way to use all his wits. Successfully finding and stepping through the doors of the newly opened mass marketed capitalistic attempt to cash in on the nostalgic tourist demographic, he allowed himself a moment of triumph as he walked to the counter and ordered a croissant and caramel macchiato, extra cream. Gotta get that shit milkier than the galaxy yo. 

He only just realized once he had his drink and all that there was literally fucking nowhere to sit, since every table was filled with either adults or more struggling college students. Honestly, the best course of action would have been to start heading back to the apartment and chill out for the next month, ignore the pain that suddenly shot up through his chest, but nope, that pain just had to rear its hideous mug. If he put stress on them, there was a chance that he could end up with a longer recovery, and while it seemed to be a minuscule fucking chance it was a chance he wasn't willing to risk. Instead, he made like some loser in middle school, looking around at the other patrons to parse out who was least likely to be a serial killer.

Then he spotted someone, and hey. They looked interesting. Maybe he could even figure out some shit about them and fuck with them a bit. With that, he went over to the table in the corner, nearest to the window but most well away from most of the other patrons, and sat down in the seat adjacent to the person. "Hey- mind if I have a seat here or am I gonna have to relive high school again here?"


	40. (Genius StriLonde au) Roxy: Be the Next Holmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017, with the other 3

"Miss Lalonde, do I have your word that you won't try another chase with the perp?!"

She groaned with all the melodrama that she could well up inside of her entire body, feeling it all spill out from the teeny tiny tips of her toes and up and out of her mouth, big and grand as if she were on Broadway about to do her big solo number. Did the Chief /really/ have to chew her out every time she got a case to be consulted on?! It wasn't like she started a chase with the perp every time there was a case- just on the times where the guy she was helping to go after was a dangerous piece of work, just so that no one on the force would have to risk it. She knew the kinds of patterns these villains there got- and she could use that herself. But Roxy knew that she wasn't about to get the chief to budge on this, so she just nodded, as if her doe eyes and pouty lip were visible over the phone, saying, "Okay boss, you got it- no chases, no confrontation, no nothing! I'll behave m'self this time, pinky swear."

The chief calmed down after that, saying alright, good, now go on home Miss Lalonde it'll be late soon. Roxy just nodded along, saying 'yessir, yessum, I got it-' until the phone line went dead. Even though it wasn't visible to anyone but herself here on this rocky lakefront, she uncrossed her fingers. Ha! As if she'd ever just sit still, especially with a case as dangerous as this!

She stepped across the sand to where the body had lain, calling up the memory of how the little woman had been when she lay there. She could see it as clearly as if the body hadn't already been long taken in for an autopsy- long brown hair, a bloated and waterlogged body bespeaking of about twenty hours drowned, the whites of her eyes showing where they had rolled back. The strange thing was, there weren't any bruises, no identifying markers, and all her teeth? Goddamn missing. Her hands? Crushed near to goddamn dust, seemingly from hitting rocks or some other object. Had this been any other place, Roxy would have suspected that she'd had suffered her injuries after she was thrown into the water, but that didn't explain the fractures or bruise (a day old) on her back and in her arms.

It couldn't be the explanation, because this was a deep as hell man made lake in some rich guy's backyard, complete with rocky beach, soft sandy bottom and loam far deeper down. In the deepest part of the lake, it was nearly a goddamn mile deep. Dave had been pretty helpful with possible explanations, but considering the fact that they had yet to trace her DNA to any possible records, there was still the mystery as to who the woman actually was. Still, with this, at least, Roxy had a clear picture of what might have taken place.

Fractures were found along her spine, along with compression fractures in the feet and fractures in her back. This suggested that she was thrown from an immense height into the water below, though the question remained of what weighed her down. It was possible that she might have been drugged, but if so, the autopsy didn't have any traces of anything yet- so it had to be someone with access to some pretty shady shit on the black market, some things that couldn't just be found. Her teeth were taken and her hands ground to near dust, as if someone were trying to hide the DNA evidence of something- or perhaps they tried to treat her as any serial killer would treat the bones of a victim, destroying any identifying markers. The killer didn't want their victim identified. Why? How did they get to the height (at least two miles up, she'd have to guess), and why drop her from so high?

Roxy shielded her eyes against the harsh light of the evening sun setting as she looked back towards the mansion, one out of a sea of thousands of others. Some of those mansions even had the same fixtures, despite not having the same things- like this house here had a helicopter pad despite having a fancy, tricked out looking drone instead of a helicopter. Man, imagine having that much money--

Hey. Wait.

Just how tricked out was this guy's drone? Roxy's eyes scanned the roof where the launch pad was, but she couldn't see the thing from there. Still, it was pretty big, from what she remembered- comparing the length of the drone to the length of the body, it would be plausible for it to carry it--

Looked like Roxy had her hypothesis.

She could see it now- rich socialite gets a hold of some kind sedative, not readily detected in most tests done on dead bodies. While the victim was out, depending on skill (which was considerable), all he would have needed to do was extract the teeth and crush the bones in the hands and fingers especially, ruining the fingerprints beyond recognition. The backdrop of night quickly falls over the mansion, and the she could see how the perp might have been able to attach the body to the drone, still knocked out somehow. Just fly that sucker a mile over the lake and drop the body, and then that was the recipe for a seemingly unknowable death.

Roxy blinked the night sky from her eyes and stopped seeing the body slowly floating up to the surface of the water, grinning widely to herself. Oh, now things were getting good! She was just about to turn around and go into the house, claim she was doing some investigating for the police, when she paused. There was a sound, not too far off, of a twig snapping, likely under a foot and somewhere at the edge of the mass expanse of woods on this guy's property. Roxy paused, reaching behind her back to pat the rifle hidden under her coat- yep, ol' Betsy was loaded up, and if the going went tough, she had a damn powerful negotiating tool.

Still, she played dumb, turning towards the noise and calling out, "Hey, who's there?! If you're here to see the crime scene, I'm afraid you're too late- police kinda beat us to the punch and cleaned it all up."

**I definitely wanna do a fic for these four!! After Understuck is done, I mean...**


	41. Feferi: Find Someone to Feed You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017 after a Little Shop of Horrors related fender bender

There were flashes of light everywhere, blinking in her eyes and causing her to squeeze the sensitive membranes shut. The sun in this solar system was so bright! It wasn't anything like down below, with Mama Meenah and Granny Gl'bgolyb, not on this dumb old metal ship! Everywhere she looked there was just brightness and metal gleaming in her eyes and shining off of her fins and causing *them* to shine too. She hated space. She hated being on this ship, and most of all, she hated not being able to hide in Mama's hair like usual!

Instead, she was there in this capsule, getting ready for the mission she'd been training her entire six sweeps for. Ever since she was a little wriggler, holed up in metal places like this and in lots of glass, and ever since Mama started teaching her the ways to be an Heiress, this was what she had been preparing for. This was her very first time conquering a planet, and she would be the first heiress ever to do it in a different way than any other that came before her! It was something her Mama thought up, and Granny Gl'bgolyb whispered the stories to her about how she wanted more slaves for the empire, maybe some pets- entertainment. Conquering distant worlds and expanding was fun, but what was even more fun? Having trophies! And that's where Feferi came in, about to do something she was proud of.

The mission was simple. She was going to infiltrate in this human city by charming all the people around her, and get them to feed her. Once she was fed enough... well, something would happen, but she wasn't quite sure what! Her Mama said she put some neat plants inside of her, and when she woke up after a lot of blood, there would be more Feferis around to carry everything out! With the people running scared, reinforcements could come, and then Feferi would get to choose a pet of her own!! It was all so EXCITING, and she was so ready to set aside all the carp and get going!

She looked up when there was a small little 'pop!' from the edges of her capsule, triggered by the sudden absence of the Earth sun outside. Mama had thought of everything- bringing Feferi down with a total eclipse of the sun was the perfect way to make sure no one realized what was happening! They'd all be too caught up to realize what had happened!

There was a small humming sound, a buzz clicking in her throat as her capsule began its descent, disintegrating mere feet from the ground. Without her outer shell for protection, she took a deep breath and steadied herself, pointing her feet straight to land on the nearest object- some kind of cloth covered table, with a whole lot of pretty, colorful plants on it! Just as the moon left the line of sight of everyone in the area, she quickly settled herself in among the bright colors of flower petals, patting her ribbon down to make sure the weapon inside was still there. She was still small, after all, and being as soft looking as she was Feferi just needed to make sure nothing could go wrong with the humans around here!

She chirped once everything was said and done and settled back in, peering up at the world around her with a wide, curious gaze as she gave an especially loud purr. Now it was showtime!


	42. Karkat: Welcome to Hell (The College Experience)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 2017, a full month after I started freshman year of college

Karkat was in hell. 

To anyone who actually knew him, they'd heard it all before because Karkat tended to use the sentence in the loosest way imaginable to try and express the deep extent of resentment that he had for every single molecule that existed in the universe, which was deeper than a shitty hole dug through the Mariana's Trench by a submarine fueled entirely upon the spite and rage that Karkat held in contempt of fate at large. It was an ouroboros of goddamn hatred, and the phrase really didn't do the full extent of his cycle of personal venom any real justice. 

Tonight, though, he meant the phrase with every ounce of its full intention, no deeper meaning involved. Satan had heard him throwing his home through the mud and personally dragged him down to the depths of hell himself, twisting his ankles and wrists until his tendons were fit to snap like twigs. His life was hell because Karkat was the Satan in this entire analogy and he was throwing himself into the bottomless pit in an attempt to look like a well adjusted adult.

He had three essays due next week. Usually any college student would welcome the opportunity to have some more time to procrastinate before the very hour before it was due, but Karkat had the unfortunate insight of knowing his schedule, himself, and knowing that if he procrastinated any more he would have been screwed worse than a Thanksgiving display the day after Halloween. He had mountains of paperwork the next day to try and get some damn funding for his schooling, and then it was just a full week of shitty lectures and shitty classes and then a weekend training with his drill unit. He just wasn't going to have time to finish it all, and like a jackass, he'd procrastinated until directly that day.

That was what brought him to some shitty convenience store right down the street from his equally shitty little apartment, a laptop bag slung over his shoulder, not even having changed out of his pajamas because he had literally spent the last fourteen plus hours writing. He got the biggest paper done (and thank God, because if he had to write one more page on Plato being an arrogant ass, he would have bashed his head into a wall and really shown everyone that men were really just enormous plucked chickens with their heads chopped off), but that still left one paper needing to be written, and the other needing to be really heavily revised. 

He couldn't do it all on empty stomach and empty caffeine reserves, and that was the thing motivating him to barrel through the isles at two in the morning in crab patterned pajama pants, hair probably enough of a rat's nest to hold the mass amounts of overly caffeinated Starbucks Double Shots and Doritos in his arms. It was also the reason why, on his way to the coffee machine for some freshly brewed shit, his fuzzy brain couldn't manage to knock together the necessary neurons to keep him from smashing into the side of some random pedestrian, spilling snacks and overpriced coffee everywhere.

"Shit!" Karkat swore, as if this couldn't have all been avoided by actually taking his time instead of giving a bull in a red painted china shop a run for its money, "Dammit all, absolutely goddamn perfect- this is hell. I am in Hell." He muttered sharply as he crouched to gather up his spilled things, only realizing a few seconds later that he should probably make sure that he wasn't about to be charged with involuntary manslaughter by tackling and see if this fuck was okay.

Dammit, Karkat was too frazzled for this shit. With his free hand he ran a hand through his hair (snagging it on at least fifty knots along the way) and looked to the person, asking gruffly, "Shit, are you alright there?"


	43. Karkat: Be a Soulless Bastard (2018 Remix)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Re-written version of [this soulless Karkat prompt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19440355/chapters/46269148)
> 
> Re-written in 2018

Sometimes, Karkat wondered why he even let some hundred year old mummy's dry, shriveled testicle order him into this stupid ball in the first place. He stood awkwardly off to the side, shoulders slightly hunched as he stuffed gloved hands in his trouser pockets and raked over the room with hard eyes. The humans in the room probably saw the werewolves and vampires steer clear, figured that there was something up with Karkat (which, technically, was true, but they didn't know that yet) and steered clear themselves, clumping together to do their business elsewhere. 

On the one hand, it just made Karkat all the more aware of the fact that he was a repulsive piece of shit in the back of Satan's briefs, directly shit out of his fiery asshole, but on the other hand it meant that the snack table was free of many patrons brave enough to fall in his line of sight, so that meant extra snacks for him. After the fifth fancy little tart, though, he found himself still sorely lacking in the food department and completely goddamn famished. And unfortunately, there was no remedying that unless he wanted some nosy drone to report back to their vampiric mentor, which would then make its way to the hive queen, which would mean getting the cost of whatever he so rudely ordered from the waitstaff taken from his paycheck.

Oh yeah, that was why he listened to some wrinkled goop. He was getting paid.

He'd thought that the need for soulless guards to attend these over luxurious galas died back a few years ago when humans finally let vampires in government, but let it be said that Karkat was always in the most likely margins to be wrong as a federal offense. Life just couldn't ever let Karkat have the chance to have even a moment of victory, even if that moment was the pathetic assurance that he knew what the fuck he was doing. While everyone else was around here, having a grand old time, he couldn't help but notice a couple of people slip away. Well, he guessed it was a couple of people- it could have very easily just been the one.

It would have been unnoticeable if he'd actually been out there chatting up girls iced to the nines with put upon charm and diamonds or guys iced to the goddamn wazoo with stories to fuel their egos, but Karkat being an antisocial ass with a generally unpleasant air about him had its uses, besides being ornery as fuck and causing a general sense of self hatred. So, after shoving a tenth tiny eclair into his mouth, he straightened up and followed after them, starting to roll up his sleeves.

Really, Karkat wasn't expecting much. Probably just some blokes who got tired of all the festivities, or who wanted to see the rest of the hive, or who had one too many flutes of champagne. Whatever the case, though, it was still out of the ordinary, and Karkat wasn't getting paid to just sit around on his hackles and watch the world go by without at least giving these stray assholes either a piece of his mind or some kind of warning about where they were going. Just in case this night was about to get more exciting, though, Karkat peeled off the grey satin gloves on his hands. If he had to be breaking up a fight, he wanted all participants fully human and fully within his abilities to knock down several pegs where they damn well belonged.

He stuffed the gloves in his pockets and silently went onwards, following the growing shadows of the group as they rounded a bunch of corners, moving down hallways. On the way, he managed to pick up an iron poker for a fireplace artfully adorned with fairy lights and expensive ornaments. Again, just in case. Really, Karkat needed to start carrying a more inconspicuous weapon, if he were going to be doing this full time.

There. Karkat stopped, gripping the handle of his makeshift weapon in his bare, brown hands as the game of tailing these guys came to an end. They'd settled somewhere in a library, one that his current boss said was *not* to be opened.

So he crept inside, taking his time to move behind a bookshelf and out of sight, for a moment just listening in. If this were anything bad like what he sorely, sorely hoped would be the case because this entire shindig was grating on his nerves with how dull it seemed to be, then he would need to actually know what was happening rather than immediately charge into danger. He was maybe a bit too swing happy at the moment, but he wasn't any fool. That, and he'd hate to be found with the iron poker if this was just something innocent

and fuck. He'd just stepped on a creaky piece of hardwood flooring. Karkat, who didn't have the grace to pause because Beelzebub was constantly standing on his shoulders, stumbled, and bumped into a bookshelf, causing a rather heavy tome to fall in a comedic manner. Even someone who was deaf could have heard that!

Shit.


	44. Karkat: Pick up Soul Watch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in late 2018, based on a Tick Tock au where Dave's soul is stuck in a pocket watch.

Life, as they say, went on. 

It went on by shoving Karkat around so much that it was gradually moving from gentle CIA type persuasion with a heaping helping of watered down sewage scavenged directly from the filthiest derelict toilets from the pipes of every Taco Bell within a five mile radius and into tossing him carelessly to the rapid winds of hell that doth dare tentacle a dick, but it went on nonetheless.

Honestly, Karkat couldn't even bring himself to be as angry as he usually was. Take a fucking rain check on that rage, give the most apologetic IOU, because honestly, he was just... exhausted.

He let himself be packed into this rickety old shit of public transport, tightly held shoulder to shoulder with random fucks breaking his personal bubble tighter than anchioves and whatever tongue eating sea parasites roomed with them, and let himself grip tightly onto the metal pole- but there was nothing that really demanded his anger. Karkat'd already spent his store of it at work, bottling it up deep, deep in his piece of shit puck of a cardiovascular muscle and trying not to get fired. Because that's what he would have needed on top of working seven days a week, either at an actual job or in online classes- to lose his shit, his job, and his dignity.

Karkat picked his way through the crowd as the bus rolled closer to his stop, a deep set exhaustion seeping from his bone marrow and bogging down his entire thought process. Not the thought process where he hated himself and gave himself hell over every little mistake he's made from the dawn of his infancy- that shit was still running clear and fast as if the US military was channeling its swelled budget directly into his meat OS. No, his thoughts about what the fuck he was even going to /do/ with himself for the rest of the evening were what were bogged down.

He finally stepped off the bus, adjusting his backpack on his shoulder. It had been raining earlier, probably. There were still puddles of muck and shit everywhere, dimly reflecting back the dreary day. The bus rattled on without him and splashed his jeans with water, causing a spike in anger reignited again for just a moment- piece of shit stupid transport, these were his only clean jeans for the moment, and now Karkat was going to have to start laundry a bit early-

Wait. There was something gleaming, by his feet.

Pausing his slowly bubbling tantrum, Karkat bent down, eyebrows furrowing. There was something golden between his feet, glittering with water. He dusted away some of the mud, making a small face as he shook the grime off his fingers, and then picked up a watch.

Other than the grime on it, it was actually in pretty good condition, looks wise- it looked expensive as shit, with something ornated braided at the top, gleaming yellow brass winking at him from under the light of the streetlamp overhead. It made him wonder what the hell would possess someone to just toss it out here, at this side of town- it looked all hells of expensive.

He brought the watch up to his ear, and then the reason became abundantly clear.

Ti-tick. Ti-tick. Ti-tick. The watch stuttered, hitching every other tick. 

It sounded... almost like a heartbeat.

What a weird goddamn watch.

With a tick like that, there was no way in hell this thing could tell the time effectively. Bringing this home would be about the equivalent of feeling shitty and sentimental over a smashed hunk of concrete bulky desktop from the 90s, complete with dial up screeching fit to slice most eardrums through the bone. Did eardrums even have bones? Fuck if Karkat knew; he could give less of a shit about anatomy. 

But this shitty heartbeat watch was just kind of sitting there, on the ground, alone and abandoned. If he left it, it'd probably get smashed underfoot by some wannabe exercise guru and whatever schmucky dog she was running by. Or at the very least, it'd get stupidly dirty, with all this shitty mud. 

There was probably a metaphor here for his own meaningless existence echoing back at him so he could finally live out his lifelong dream of tearing himself a new asshole for existing, or like, how humanity found little ripples of itself in the most trivial of things. Karkat, unfortunately, whether by design or just sheer stubbornness of will, adamantly refused to believe that the universe at large was clever enough to orchestrate such thematic serendipity when it wouldn't get its cosmic orifice nub out its tentacled asshole to realize that making his life shit wasn't a goddamn hoot and a half.

So. Yeah. He took the watch home with him. Big deal- and if he took a washcloth and gently rubbed off any dirt as soon as he got back to his shitty little apartment and meticulously searched it over for any scratches, that was all Karkat's fucking business, thank you very much.

Once he was satisfied that it didn't seem too banged up (or, banged up at all, really- it looked damn near pristine), he held it up to his ear, trying to see if maybe there was like, something characteristic? Something that if he typed it into google he'd get a tutorial on how to fix this shit up. It occurred to Karkat, as he was listening to it give that steady /ti-tick, ti-tick, ti-tick/ that maybe he was spending too much attention on a random watch he found by the road. Probably. Or, maybe not.

He didn't know why, but he felt like there was something with this watch...


	45. Jade and the Trickster Apocalypse (Dawn of the Final Day)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rewritten version of [this trickster zombie apocalypse prompt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19440355/chapters/46269427) from 2016
> 
> Written in March, 2019

It had been six months since the initial outbreak.

It'd... been a bit since Jade was around another sane, living person, but that was fine! Honest. It was probably better that she wander alone, to be quite fair- far less chance of any tricksters worming their way in and accidentally locking lips with someone else while they're still in the early stages, when they're impossible to distinguish from anyone else. Easier to work. And work was never done! Jade was a working gal, through and through, and that wasn't about to change with something as silly as the apocalypse!

So she was alone, walking through one of the more dilapidated bits of town- still untouched by bandits, or so one would think, since the outbreak in this town was more recent- with enough guns to make military buffs the world over steam and a small fanny pack full of samples. Samples of what, one might ask? Well, wouldn't that imaginary one like to know! Just another facet of work, really, and not something she particularly liked to talk about... or well. If she. If she had talked to anyone sane in six months, then yes, there would have been much to keep mum about...

Now wasn't the time to overthink being lonelier than ever or any such nonsense- the part of town she walked through was absolutely infested by the victims of that virus. She gingerly stepped over rubble from buildings long since left to decay, careful not to trip over the bits of vines that signaled mother nature reclaiming the landscape that humans had long since vacated, living on. If Jade were a cynic, she'd think that it was only a matter of time before humanity committed mass suicide. Good thing Jade wasn't! After all, there was still hope left, and some of it lived within the little fanny pack she had while the rest stuck around at home base, incubating in a specialty briefcase she and her Grandpa had made!

Ah... Her Grandpa. It had been six months since the initial outbreak, and it had been six months since...

There was the sound of something metallic rolling across the uneven ground behind her.

Jade held very, very still, pulling her leather gloves tighter around her fingers. To the left was a half broken down apartment building, the bare metal spines of its infrastructure reaching bony fingers up towards the sky, as blue as it ever was. To her right was far more open space than Jade was strictly comfortable with, and in front of her were some chunks of asphalt and concrete that wedged upwards, providing possibly the shittiest cover imaginable. But at least, it was some cover.

The slight /ting/ of metal sounded behind her again, and she listened carefully, trying to gauge what was there. It was too calculated to be one of those zombies in its' more advanced stage- and if it were, it would have already jumped on her by now, trying to tear through her as quickly as a lion on a wildebeest. Then, after a long, silent moment where she held as still as a statue, she heard a faint giggle, sounding shaky and euphoric. She slowly turned her head to look back at the trickster there and it covered its eyes a wide grin splitting across its face. These things tended to run by their own childish logic- if anyone had ever worked with kids, they might see some of the game playing behavior in five-year-olds, or particularly imaginative preteens. But there was a distinct, neon discoloration to the cheeks- it was farther along than Jade strictly wanted to see. Farther along towards Phase 2 than she needed, really.

Sometimes, these things thronged together and were just smart enough to send a scout. Just cognizant enough. The trickster opened its mouth to say something, candy-coated drool dripping from its lips, and Jade drew her pistol and shot. The muffler she had on it was crude and on the verge of breaking, but it did the job. It took all six shots for the Trickster to drop to the ground, stone cold dead.

Hey. Maybe that should scare her, now that she thought about it. Not the trickster- how easy it was to shoot it like it hadn't been apparently trying to play red light, green light. Maybe the scary part was that she... couldn't really bring herself to care.

Ah... she was getting so gloomy now. Jade almost wished she could smile a bit more... but man, who was she kidding? It was the apocalypse. It wasn't as if she had anyone to pretend to be happy for, other than herself. And well, why shouldn't she try being happy for herself? After all, with the right perspective, this was an adventure! An adventure, and a way to continue her work!

Jade wasn't particularly happy with her work, of course. But who was happy with work? It was just her duty, was all. And if nothing else could be said, it could be said that Jade tried her damnedest to make the best out of a bad situation! Even if that situation was picking through some really dangerous territory, looking for a fresher face. A trickster that wasn't all that infected... maybe a few days of infection... That was all she needed, really. It'd been so hard to find subjects, lately... And there was no saving someone once they pushed to the murder spree phase of the virus.

Oh, no! She'd been looking at this corpse for way too long now... now she was getting into internal monologues, like some kind of weirdo! She was still busy, so busy! There was no time to lollygag and watch those wide glassy eyes of the trickster, frozen in some look of betrayal. Looking almost too human. God, this was going to do thing to her, and it wasn't as if there were ready clinics for the mentally ill around here, what with humanity being threatened and all. Not that she had the time to go, anyway. She had to focus. Not on herself- on everyone else.

She'd accidentally created that virus, after all.

Jade was going to fix this mess.

She started towards the apartment building- the best bet for bands of newbie tricksters in the throes of euphoria, or else a good deal of supplies. She was running low on bandages at home and needed a can opener, since the other one had been recently cannibalized for parts. If she could get some more canned goods, that'd be even better...

Hearing heavy footsteps, Jade tensed. It sounded almost like the regular footsteps of someone with combat boots, or something similar- not at all like the uneven gait of those tricksters, or the manic, erratic pacing of their murderous zombie counterparts. It seemed as if there was another person there. Quickly feinting to the side and ducking behind a piece of concrete, Jade peeked out, grabbing her rifle. Then, she gave a sharp whistle, trying to covertly get their attention- if they hadn't seen her already. It wasn't safe to be yelling "who's there??" or any such horror movie bullshit, after all.

But Jade still had to wonder... who was there?

**I definitely need to make an au of this...**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end! Every single prompt I wrote and posted on Cherubplay, along with rewritten versions... I hope you enjoyed this little exercise in nostalgia.


End file.
